Last month, Sports Illustrated removed various articles after the authors were exposed as AI-generated personas and whose text was seemingly AI-generated itself—it was hard to be certain, because the material turned out to be sourced to a content farm whose excuses and assertions Sports Illustrated could only weakly repeat. And now it has removed those responsible for the mess, including the company's CEO.
A spokesperson for The Arena Group declined to go into further detail to explain the ouster of Ross Levinsohn, who served as chief executive for three years. But the move came after an embarrassing debacle in which Sports Illustrated was caught publishing stories with fake author names and profile photos generated by artificial intelligence.
Levinsohn was replaced, effective immediately, by interim chief executive Manoj Bhargava, the 5-Hour Energy founder who owns a majority stake in The Arena Group, said Vince Bodiford, a spokesperson for Bhargava. … "All of the media brands, including Sports Illustrated, will continue to operate with the management of those verticals, while the company just takes a broad view of operations and how to improve the business overall," Bodiford told CNN.
Glad to see the founder of 5-Hour Energy will be keeping a close eye henceforth on this media brand / vertical. The sportswriting legacy of Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Deford and Dan Jenkins is in safe hands.
