AI-generated content from AdVon, the company responsible for the Sports Illustrated scandal, has been found in various publications including Hollywood Life, Us Weekly, the Miami Herald, and even the Los Angeles Times. AdVon, a “content solutions” provider, first gained attention for publishing numerous articles under fictional bylines in Sports Illustrated, leading to legal issues for the publisher.
Initially, AdVon employed overseas contractors to write product reviews, which were allegedly used for training language models. Later, these contractors were replaced entirely by AI. Despite this, AdVon denies relying solely on artificial intelligence for content creation and claims to use it responsibly alongside human efforts.
The company faced scrutiny when reviews attributed to non-existent individuals with AI-generated headshots and names were published on a USA Today affiliate site. This led to action by Gannett, USA Today’s parent company, which removed the content.
According to screenshots obtained by Futurism, AdVon has published over 90,000 articles for numerous publications through its content management system.
As the prevalence of AI-generated content increases on prominent websites, search engines like Google are taking measures to combat the spread of non-human-generated material. Google’s recent crackdown on “site reputation abuse” aims to prevent low-quality or affiliate content from using top-ranked publication domains to manipulate search results. Under the new rules, content posted without proper oversight and intended to manipulate search rankings will be deprioritized in search results. Already, significant changes in search rankings for certain queries, such as “coupon,” have been observed.
