"Sports Illustrated" Has an AI #Fail

The risks of AI have been well documented, that’s for sure. Perhaps even much more so than the benefits.

Like anything new, we have to sort out the good with the bad and find a place where a new technology or a new way of working or a new tool is only helping us on the positive side.

With AI, as an industry we are still working it out. We are conscious of the pitfalls and trying to avoid them while searching for how AI can transform how we work. Because I know it can, as we figure it out.

Caught in the cross-fire as an early adopter is the magazine “Sports Illustrated.” They got “caught” using AI-created journalists writing AI-created stories that appeared to be written by more “traditional” journalists. Evidently the quality was off, so it was easy to flag. And yes people flagged it. Fact checkers. Grammar police. Content controllers.

They’ve taken a lot of heat as a result. Part of the learning curve I would say.

First ones out often have to experiment and perhaps take some heat. I give them credit for getting out there with a new technology and we can all learn from what they perhaps didn’t get quite right. That’s the benefit of operating as an industry that learns from each other. Learns and reapplies.

Like I always say, “marketing is a spectator sport,” and we can learn a lot from each other.

With AI, we are in total learning mode. So we are going to make mistakes, some more purposeful than others some more innocent than others. Let’s collectively learn from them all.

What’s your experience? JIM