Media outlets employ AI to generate artificial writers who are nearly as eerie and devoid of humanity as actual journalists
A Year Ago, Sports Illustrated Fooled the Internet with a Fake Steph Curry Video
In a jaw-dropping display of skill, Steph Curry, the NBA champion and Golden State Warriors point guard, made five consecutive full-court shots in just thirty seconds. Sports Illustrated, known for its sports coverage, shared the video on their social media platforms without revealing the truth behind it. They even wrote on Twitter, “Just finished a shoot with Steph Curry — this dude just can’t miss.” The video seemed so real that even basketball enthusiasts couldn’t tell it was fake at first glance.
But here’s the twist: Sports Illustrated was well aware that the video was a sham. They tagged the creator, who has a reputation for manipulating videos, in one of their posts. It was all a ploy to grab attention on social media, and surprisingly, there was no significant backlash or discussion about ethics in sports journalism when Sports Illustrated finally admitted the truth.
Sports Illustrated’s Deception Goes Beyond Videos
However, this incident was just the tip of the iceberg. Sports Illustrated didn’t stop at deceiving its audience with fake videos. They took it a step further by using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate entire articles and even create fictional authors with fabricated biographies. Futurism, a website dedicated to exploring emerging technologies, recently exposed this scam.
One of the AI-generated authors, Drew Ortiz, had a suspicious biography on Sports Illustrated’s website. Described as a white male with brown hair and blue eyes, Drew claimed to be an outdoor enthusiast with a passion for guiding readers through nature’s perils. The language used in the biography seemed eerie, especially considering it was all the work of AI. The goal behind these fake authors and articles was simple: to generate revenue through affiliate links.
For instance, one of Drew Ortiz’s articles titled “Play Like A Pro With The Best Full-Size Volleyballs” was essentially an advertisement disguised as content. The AI-generated paragraph preceding the affiliate links attempted to engage readers by highlighting the popularity and excitement of volleyball. However, the awkward line about needing an actual ball to practice with gave away the artificial nature of the author.
Sports Illustrated eventually replaced Drew Ortiz with another AI-generated author named Sora Tanaka. Sora’s biography emphasized her love for fitness and trying different foods and drinks. She advocated for regular physical and mental activity. It’s clear that Sports Illustrated prioritized profit over genuine journalism.
The Dark Side of Sports Illustrated’s AI Experiment
Sports Illustrated’s venture into AI-generated content raises ethical concerns. By deceiving readers with fake authors and articles, they undermine the trust and integrity of journalism. It’s a reminder that not everything we see or read online is as it seems. As consumers of media, we must remain vigilant and critical, questioning the authenticity and motives behind the content we encounter.
Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations
We can infer from this that AI doesn’t exactly have a high opinion of humans, if this is the bar it’s setting for us. Just use your body or your mind three times a week. Let’s start there, AI is saying to the human race. I’d like to say that the robots are underestimating us here, but I don’t think they are.
AI’s Fake Headshots and Articles
At this point, it’s important to mention that Sports Illustrated didn’t just have AI generate articles, and fake biographies for fake writers. AI also created fake headshots for these writers. They generated images out of thin air. Both Tanaka and Ortiz had AI-produced headshots. We know that because the headshots were available for sale, on an online marketplace that sells AI headsets. Eventually, after they were confronted by Futurism, Sports Illustrated took all of these articles and headshots down, scrubbing all of it from their website.
In a statement, the company blamed a contractor for all of this. They denied that the articles were written by AI, although they didn’t deny that the headshots were AI-generated. They also claimed that editors carefully review all content that’s uploaded.
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That’s a claim that several other websites have made in the past. CNET, for example, insisted that while it was using AI to draft articles, editors were carefully fact-checking every detail prior to publication. How did that work out? A few months ago, CNET published an article claiming that a $10,000 deposit in a savings account, earning a 3% APY, would return $10,300 in profit after the first year. That’s off by about $10,000. CNET later appended a correction to the article. Somehow that one slipped by the fact-checkers.
Bankrate, one of CNET’s sister sites, has had the same problem. They claim that their editors carefully review AI-generated articles, but these articles are full of mistakes. Including mathematical mistakes, which is the one thing you’d think AI would always get right.
So what do we make of all this?
It’s easy to mock outlets like CNET and Bankrate and Sports Illustrated, which no one reads anymore. But it’s not hard to see where this is all heading. We’re rapidly and willfully moving towards a dystopian world where AI does everything and most human effort and labor has become redundant. Everyone can see this coming, and knows it’s bad, but it seems like none of our leaders have the fortitude to do anything about it. AI replacing Sports Illustrated writers is the least of our concerns in this regard. What happens when AI starts replacing, oh I don’t know, truck drivers and ride-share drivers? These are jobs that a significant portion of the American middle class depend on in order to survive. What happens when Waymo and Cruise and Tesla manage to perfect their self-driving AIs?
We’re not there yet, of course. It’ll likely be several more years until AI is capable of doing any of that. And it’s still possible we’ll eventually elect leaders in time, who will do something to prevent the potential destruction of millions of jobs in this country.
In the meantime, it’s important to look closely at the jobs that AI *is* capable of replacing, and what that says about these jobs and our culture at large.
It’s hard to deny that “journalism” — and sports journalism in particular — has become so vacuous and pointless that it can easily be replaced by robots and most readers don’t even notice. It’s generally not a good thing to replace human jobs with AI, but in the media, so many of the humans doing the jobs are already barely human as it is. So it feels like a bit of a lateral move.
This isn’t just happening at Sports Illustrated and CNET and Bankrate. It’s happening at all the various tiers of garbage journalism, including gaming journalism. The website Kotaku now features a few AI-written articles. Microsoft Start — which is the homepage that Microsoft presents to users of its Internet browser — recently featured an obituary with this headline: “Brandon Hunter Useless At 42.” This is a former NBA player who died suddenly, and that’s the headline the AI went with. He’s not dead — he’s, “useless.” Which is sort of true in a literal sense, I suppose. But that’s not how humans typically look at it. Microsoft, maybe the biggest tech company on the planet, promoted that story. And here’s the amazing thing: It didn’t cause any kind of stir. You probably hadn’t even heard about it.
That’s because we’re used to this. We take it for granted that whatever garbage we read was either written by a poorly programmed AI, or it was written by some liberal arts graduate with no life skills. Either way, we don’t take it seriously, it’s just noise. The bar is so low that it’s impossible to be outraged by poor quality journalism anymore.
Indeed, it’s hard to be outraged by the quality of pretty much anything produced for mass consumption at this point. Take popular music, for example. A few days ago, an AI “singer-songwriter” using the name Anna Indiana went viral on social media. Here’s how Anna introduced itself, followed by some of Anna’s singing:
Hello world! I’m Anna Indiana and I’m an AI singer-songwriter. Here’s my first song, Betrayed by this Town. Everything from the key, tempo, chord progression, melody notes, rhythm, lyrics, and my image and singing, is auto-generated using AI. I hope you like it 💕 pic.twitter.com/0Cf42iyxHI
— Anna Indiana (@AnnaIndianaAI) November 24, 2023
Now, needless to say, kill it with fire. The song is bad and bland and creepily lifeless. It’s also quite ominous. AI’s idea of a fun pop ballad is a lamentation about the pointlessness and futility of existence, followed by a call for us to “tear it all down.” The robots are, once again, not trying to hide their disdain for the human species. But then again, the mainstream music industry also hates the human species, and also has been, for decades, churning out its own bad and bland and creepily lifeless content.
AI Singers: The Rise of Soulless Performances
When it comes to music, we often rely on reviews to gauge the quality of a performance. However, there’s a new trend emerging – soulless AI singers that are receiving heaps of praise. Take, for instance, the AI-generated Johnny Cash singing a Taylor Swift song. This mind-blowing rendition took social media by storm a few weeks ago:
AI-generated Johnny Cash singing Taylor Swift is blowing my mind pic.twitter.com/TeibApYOoP
— BuccoCapital Guy (@buccocapital) October 31, 2023
AI Johnny Cash received rave reviews, despite the fact that listeners were hearing the voice of a deceased country music legend singing shallow lyrics. Surprisingly, many even claimed to prefer it over Johnny Cash’s original work.
The Future of AI-Generated Content
This phenomenon leads us to a startling realization – the majority of the content we consume online, movies we watch, and songs we listen to will eventually be created by AI. As technology advances, human creators seem to be losing their depth and creativity, while AI continues to improve. The line between humans and AI is blurring, reaching a point where they become indistinguishable.
Of course, AI may never be able to produce masterpieces like “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Godfather,” or compose music that rivals Beethoven. However, these days, our culture values easily digestible content like Marvel movies, short internet blurbs, and canned pop music – all of which AI can effortlessly generate. As long as we crave content, we won’t care about its origin or who produced it. This is the danger of AI - not its potential to enslave humanity, but its ability to blend seamlessly with us.
This situation brings to mind the final pages of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” originally an allegory about communism, but now a fitting allegory for AI. The last line resonates: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again. But already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Replace “pig” with “AI,” and you have a modern allegory. It’s incredible to think that just a few decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for reputable publications like Sports Illustrated to publish computer-generated content and pass it off as journalism. Yet, it happened for months without anyone noticing, until a website called “Futurism” finally caught on.
Men are becoming indistinguishable from pigs, to borrow Orwell’s phrase. With each passing day and algorithm refinement, it becomes increasingly challenging to tell the difference.
What measures can be taken to distinguish between human-created and AI-generated content, and how can we educate the public about this distinction?
Us to question the future of AI-generated content. Will AI eventually replace human creativity and artistry? Will we reach a point where we can no longer distinguish between human-created and AI-generated content? And if that happens, what does it mean for our society and culture?
While AI-generated content may seem like a novelty now, it is becoming more prevalent in various industries. From journalism to music, AI is already making its mark. But it’s crucial to remember that AI lacks the depth and emotional connection that comes with human creativity. AI can imitate, but it cannot truly understand or replicate human experiences.
As consumers, we need to be discerning and critical. We must be aware of the potential biases and limitations of AI-generated content. We should not allow ourselves to be fooled or manipulated by fake videos, articles, or singers, regardless of how convincing they may appear. It’s essential to value and support genuine human creativity and expression.
At the same time, AI can be a powerful tool when used responsibly and ethically. It can assist humans in their creative endeavors, offering new insights and possibilities. But we must ensure that AI remains a tool and does not overshadow or replace human ingenuity.
As AI continues to advance, it is crucial for us to have discussions about its implications and the ethical boundaries that should be in place. We need to consider the impact of AI on industries and jobs, as well as its influence on our perception of reality. Only through awareness and critical thinking can we navigate the evolving landscape of AI-generated content in a way that preserves and values
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