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Arena Group names Manoj Bhargava as interim CEO
Manoj Bhargava was appointed interim CEO after publisher of Sports Illustrated fired Sam Levinsohn in the wake of the AI scandal
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The parent company of U.S. sports publication Sports Illustrated (SI), The Arena Group (TAG) has announced Manoj Bhargava’s appointment as the interim CEO. This comes after they fired CEO of four years, Sam Levinsohn, following a recent AI (artificial intelligence) scandal.
The firm issued a statement announcing Levinsohn’s termination on the heels of an investigative report that found the content in SI’s articles, as well as the authors, down to their identities, were generated using AI.
“Today, the board of directors of The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: AREN) met and took actions to improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company. The board terminated the employment of CEO Ross Levinsohn, and named Manoj Bhargava as interim Chief Executive Officer, both effective today,” the statemen issued by TAG read.
Bhargava is the founder of 5-hour ENERGY, a dietary supplement drink. The billionaire is also the owner of Bridge Media Networks media group with two national television networks distributed across more tan 100 owned and affiliated Over-The-Air (OTA) stations, 35 OTT, CTV agreements, and multiple MVPD and cable agreements.
AI scandal involving Arena Group
The investigative report, published by futurism, on November 27 was followed by a string of terminations at TAG. Levinsohn’s termination “follows actions last week, in which the company terminated the employment of operations president and COO Andrew Kraft, media president Rob Barrett, and corporate counsel Julie Fenster,” read TAG’s recent statement.
The unverified report by Futurism was published with information provided by a person involved in content creation at SI. As per the individual, AI was using several AI-generated authors. "There's a lot," the individual said of the fake authors. Another person involved in content creation at SI, anonymously told Futurism, that the identities of the authors, as well as some of the articles were churned out using AI.
The Sports Illustrated Union organized under the New Guild of New York, also weighed in on the matter after the Futurism report went public. “We, the workers of the SI Union, are horrified by a story on the site Futurism. If true, these practices violate everything we believe about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers,” the message began.
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