That Sports News Story You Clicked on Could Be AI Slop
For instance, a headline like “Red Sox Urged to Risk Passing on Alex Bregman in Favor of $427 Million Superstar” looks ordinary enough—and it seems, at first glance, to come from BBC Sports. But on closer inspection you may be on a knock-off called “BBCSportss,” and the copy has been lifted from Sports Illustrated. Elsewhere on that site you’ll also find stories that aren’t stolen directly from another writer but instead read like a garbled remix of what other sports bloggers have written and appear to be AI-generated.
DoubleVerify, a software platform tracking online ads and media analytics, recently conducted an analysis of a collection of over 200 websites filled with a mixture of seemingly AI-generated content and snippets of news articles cribbed from actual media outlets. According to the analysis, these sites often chose their domain names and designed their websites to mimic those operated by established media brands, including ESPN, NBC, Fox, CBS, and the BBC. Many of these ersatz sites look like legitimate sports news offerings.
“We did not approve the ‘BBC Sportss’ content, and it is in fact plagiarized,” says Sports Illustrated spokesperson Paige Graham.
