The boss of Sports Illustrated-owner Arena Group has been axed after the magazine found itself at the centre of an artificial intelligence (AI) fakery storm.
Ross Levinsohn was replaced with immediate effect by Arena group majority owner Manoj Bhargava as interim chief executive.
Last week, the company also sacked its chief operating officer, media president and corporate counsel.
It follows the embarrassing findings a fortnight ago that Sports Illustrated had published articles by non-existent authors with AI-generated biographies and headshots.
Arena said the removal of Levinsohn had been decided by the board of directors after a meeting on actions to “improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company”.
The apparent AI articles were unveiled by online magazine Futurism, which found articles supposedly written by one 'Sora Tanaka', a supposed fitness and nutrition expert, but was found to be fictitious.
Similarly, an article about volleyball by 'Drew Ortiz' was under scrutiny, as Ortiz seems not to exist.
Arena denied these allegations, stating the content was from AdVon Commerce, a third-party advertiser, which used pen names.
The group later severed ties with AdVon and removed its content, emphasising its disapproval of pseudonymous writing.
At a meeting last week, Bhargava, the founder of energy drink 5-hour Energy, reportedly outlawed Powerpoint presentations, told staff to "stop doing dumb stuff" and said the "amount of useless stuff you guys do is staggering".