Controversy in the United States around articles written by people who… do not exist

Journalists from “Sports Illustrated” magazine have complained about seeing articles on their site signed by, apparently, real people, with supporting photos, but of which no trace can be found. This looks very much like artificial intelligence.

The authors of these articles are Drew Ortiz and Sora Tonaka. Ortiz is introduced as a man who spends a lot of time outdoors, Tonaka, as a fitness guru. Problem is, these names do not refer to anyone in real life and the portraits that accompany the articles are in fact available for sale on a computer-generated photo site.

The Futurism website [article en anglais]which closely follows the development of AI, noticed that turns of phrase in the articles were very clumsy. “They look like they were written by an extra-terrestrial”, notes Futurism. Example : “Volleyball can be tricky, especially without a real ball to practice with.” The journalists’ union Sports Illustratedfurious, quickly published a press release to deplore these methods and dissociate themselves from them.

Does this mean that Sports Illustrated published articles written by a computer? The Arena Group, which owns the publication, denies this, without convincing. A spokesperson explains that these articles are part of the content provided by a third-party company called AdVon Commerce and that they were not produced by the editorial staff of Sports Illustrated. The Arena Group adds that AdVon assured it that the items offered for Sports Illustrated and other titles in the group are indeed written by humans but that these authors choose pseudonyms to protect their identity. The Arena Group was apparently unaware of this and does not approve of this way of working. It therefore ceased its partnership with AdVon. The articles in question have since been removed from the site.

An already established practice

But ultimately, we already live in a world in which AI writes articles. In 2016, the Washington Post entrusted an artificial intelligence called Heliograf with writing very short articles on the results of the Rio Olympic Games. The Associated Press, the world’s largest news agency, uses AI to report on company financial results. But it’s no secret, AI is clearly identified. THE Post like AP justify their choice by the free time thus left to their reporters to deal with other subjects, which require reporting or analysis.

The goal is also to produce content at a lower cost. The sites Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, Cnet or the Gannett group, owner of USA Today and hundreds of local newspapers, have also used AI with dubious results and many errors so far. But in the case of Sports Illustrated, the situation is much more tendentious since the articles are signed by journalists who do not exist. Repetitive writing makes it possible to detect the presence of artificial intelligence today, but with the progress of technology, it will undoubtedly be more complicated tomorrow.