Sports Illustrated publisher The Arena Group fired its president and chief operating officer one week after a wave of backlash swamped the media group for its use of AI-generated content.
Arena Group confirmed to Futurism on Wednesday that president Rob Barrett and COO Andrew Kraft were dismissed, but the publisher said the exits were unrelated to the AI scandal. Rather, the ouster was part of Arena Group owner Manoj Bhargava’s reorganization plan, reps told Futurism.
Regardless, the moves come after Futurism surfaced Sports Illustrated’s use of articles produced by fake authors, replete with AI-generated headshots and biographies. The same was done on Arena-owned finance site, TheStreet.
Arena Group at first said a third-party vendor, AdVon Commerce, was responsible for the content distribution on its websites. Arena claimed it had assurances from AdVon that the articles were written and edited by humans, not AI, and that the use of pen names was to protect author privacy.
The Sports Illustrated union said last week it was “horrified” by the use of the AI-generated content, demanding answers and saying in a statement that its members deplored “being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers.”
Arena Group CEO Ross Levinsohn survived the scandal and remains in his role.
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Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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