We found out recently that Sports Illustrated had been using artificial intelligence to create ‘‘content,’’ as journalism often is called nowadays.
After the initial disgust — the use of fake names and fake photos of fake ‘‘writers’’ (Hi, Drew Ortiz!) were the kickers — things have settled down. SI brass apologized, said it was all a big misunderstanding, it came from ‘‘an external, third-party provider,’’ there was no intent to deceive, blah, blah, blah.
The fact is, AI is here to stay, it’s everywhere and its use only is going to increase. SI’s mistake was going too far, too fast with absolutely zero consideration of ethics, integrity or even a certain thing called quality.
It was all about money, of course. No surprise there. You create somebody from the ether, a ‘‘journalist’’ named Sora Tanaka, who, according to SI’s bio, is ‘‘a fitness guru, and loves to try different foods and drinks,’’ and then have ‘‘her’’ write reviews for your magazine? Her salary? Zero. Fabulous!
For me, a former SI senior writer, seeing the descent of words into commodities no different from wheat or pork bellies, particularly in a once-lustrous magazine that cherished good writing beyond all, is just plain sad.
But I knew it was coming. It has been a slow train for years, now speeding up. The day Craigslist appeared, for instance, newspaper ads were dead. The day any schmo could blast out sports stories and photos to the world, no matter how crappy, contrived or phony, SI was dead.
The internet has made everybody an author, a critic, an expert, a ‘‘journalist.’’ Thus, the revenue model for authentic, professional-quality print journalism — ads and subscriptions — is a skeleton.
To the rescue? Hedge funds and private-equity firms, joints such as The Arena Group, which owns SI and other once-proud journals.
The Arena Group says it is ‘‘an innovative technology platform and media company with a proven cutting-edge playbook that transforms media brands.’’ Whatever the hell that means.
They could have cut through the nonsense and just said they’re in it for money.
‘‘They’re not really in the print business,’’ retired SI editor Rob Fleder said when I spoke with him.
Credit a living journalist named Maggie Haberman for bringing the SI/AI fraudulence into the open. But the truth is, AI is used by all kinds of journalism sites in many ways, just not with fake names and stories. You use it constantly yourself. Spell-check? Word? PowerPoint? Grammarly? Google Maps? All AI-generated.
Deep fakes, which are the evil spawn of AI, are now so convincing that, starting Jan. 1, California schools will be required to teach media literacy to all children as part of English, science, math and history lessons so they can recognize fake news. The first question they will be taught to ask: ‘‘Who created this?’’
SI’s fraud was a shallow fake, I suppose. But already-giant Microsoft has built a fleet of what it calls ‘‘office copilots,’’ AI ‘‘assistants’’ using OpenAI’s technology that a writer can talk to and use like, well, a co-writer.
Would SI’s sins have been so egregious — or possibly forgiven — if the site had said, ‘‘This article was written by artificial intelligence, and the accompanying name and photo are ones we dreamed up’’?
Someday, machine and man will merge. It’s inevitable. Might we not have co-bylines from an author and his robotic pal, for example? Right now, AI gives us ChatGPT and Bard, among others, and those programs write without nuance, touch or awareness of themselves. They replicate, predict and synthesize. They’re not sentient creatures — yet.
Complaining about SI is almost like complaining about gas lawn mowers. They’re loud and smelly, and what about the old quiet days of hands-on, push mowers? But would you ever go back?
Does it bother us that the car map we use for directions knows our whereabouts? That our cellular phones can track us to the square foot? Privacy? Ha. We traded it long ago for convenience.
Much of AI is wonderful. In medicine, travel, genetics, design, energy savings, it leads on. Consider that new AI-assisted science has created a drug for ‘‘canine life extension’’ — that is, a virtual doggy fountain of youth. It might be ready by 2026. Imagine, Fido at age 70!
So the SI debacle seems to me chump change in an AI-dominated world. Let’s pray it’s just a stupid sporting sputter en route to a brighter future.
