Another one got

This time it’s Sports Illustrated

“Drew likes to say that he grew up in the wild, which is partially true. He grew up in a farmhouse, surrounded by woods, fields and a creek. Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature. Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking or just back on his parents’ farm.”

—writer profile for a Sports Illustrated reporter

The only problem is Drew didn’t grow up on a farm. He didn’t grow up. He’s fake. After a profile like that, some Arkansas types might have wanted to read Drew’s stuff. Or email him. Maybe invite him down for a camping trip/tourism PR visit/Chamber of Commerce moment to the Ozarks. Except the writer might be AI imagination.

Pesky reporters (but we repeat ourselves) have discovered that some of SI’s storytellers are stories themselves. Drew isn’t the only one. Apparently there’s somebody—or not somebody— named Sora who is “a fitness guru, and loves to try different foods and drinks.” How Sora would get the liquid into the computer’s porthole is another question.

SI said earlier this week that it had deleted “several articles from its website after a report found the once-celebrated legacy magazine had published the pieces under fake author names and profile images,” according to CNN and other sources.

Oy.

“The report, which was published by Futurism, found that the magazine had repeatedly published articles whose authors could not be found online outside the Sports Illustrated website,” CNN’s report noted. “The articles were all accompanied by AI-generated profile photos that Futurism also found for sale on digital marketplaces that sell AI-produced headshots.

“During the course of Futurism’s reporting, some of the alleged Sports Illustrated writers mysteriously vanished from the publication’s website—and their articles began appearing under the names of different authors who similarly didn’t appear to exist online and whose likenesses were also being sold on AI headshot marketplaces.” Double oy.

Futurism is a website that covers the future of science and technology. SI’s owners told the press that some product reviews had been created by a third party, AdVon Commerce, and “We have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy—actions we don’t condone—and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.”

Whether the actual stories were written by people or HAL still isn’t clear. At least to us. But everybody tends to agree that the names/likeness/ image and profiles were made up.

This is going to happen more and more frequently, Gentle Reader, and we wouldn’t for a second indulge in any kind of schadenfreude on the subject. It would be dangerous waters to sail for any kind of media outfit to think it couldn’t be taken in by a third party this way.

Sports Illustrated’s union said it was “horrified” by the reports. It should be.

This stuff is going to get harder and harder to identify, and stickier and stickier to pull from the real news written by real people, especially as artificial intelligence keeps evolving closer to the real kind. Those of us in the real media have not only an obligation to keep this stuff out of newsrooms, but an obligation to report it when AI fools us. It keeps the trust between media and consumer. And without trust, especially in newspapers, there’s not much of a future.

The comforting prospect in this week’s news about SI:

A group of humans uncovered it.