Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been embraced by different news publications, such as ESPN, the renowned American sports channel. Unfortunately for ESPN, its AI is not quite hitting the mark with its audience.
ESPN's AI Game Recaps are meant to fill its website with news articles generated by language models, focusing on lesser-known sports and events. However, its initial articles on women's soccer games faced criticism, with users calling its write-ups "bland."
ESPN's AI-Generated Game Recaps Face Criticism
ESPN is now under fire online after the launch of its AI-generated Game Recaps feature, which writes sports stories, after missing a key event in US women's soccer history (via The Verge).
There were complaints regarding ESPN's AI-made news. The possibility of inaccuracies is something that the company is seemingly acknowledging as it offers a disclaimer that these articles were written by "ESPN Generative AI Services."
The AI Game Recap is powered by Microsoft's AI and focuses on summarizing games for less popular sports. This allows human writers to focus on more in-depth stories.
ESPN AI is Bland, Missing Key Info on Articles
As pointed out by an X account, the original article published by ESPN failed to mention Alex Morgan's retirement in the 2024 NWSL September 8 game between North Carolina Courage and San Diego Wave.
However, there was a separate article on ESPN written by a human journalist that covered Morgan's emotional final game, which is a contrast to the bland, AI-generated version.
ESPN's adoption of AI is not going as planned despite it being dedicated to "underserved sports." As of press time, it only covers two leagues, the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL).
Generative AI in News and Media
Different big tech companies that have developed AI and large language models (LLMs) have gained an interest in creating news stories that deliver summaries or write-ups for their audiences.
Among them are OpenAI and Microsoft, which have been in talks with possible clients in the hopes of providing them with the AI tool that will write for them instead of human journalists.
There is also Elon Musk's xAI, which utilizes Grok to summarize trending news stories that were published on the platform, which end up being the "Stories" that are now found on X. However, the social media platform has been criticized by the public after the AI inaccurately reported that former Golden State Warriors guard, Klay Thompson, "threw bricks" and vandalized in Sacramento, when in fact, the basketball star only had a bad game.
Google also had plans regarding new writing tools to offer for news publications and companies to generate content for them.
That being said, not everyone is on board with this apparent journalism replacement, especially as they seem to be unable to write completely accurate stories.
