NFL Broadcaster Learns AI Doesn’t Always Know

“This is the age of AI, and we use it for everything,” Woodson said on Fox NFL Kickoff. “What I learned this year is that the first week of the season, I went on ChatGPT and I just asked a question. I said ‘How many games in the division did the Packers win last year?’ And ChatGPT said they were 0-6 in the division. So, I thought it was an easy enough question. I come up here, I said it with my chest, I’m talking about the Packers. I’m like, ‘Man, they didn’t win a game in the division last year.’ As soon as I got on [X], somebody quickly corrected me. They said, ‘Hey man, you know the Packers won one division game last year. They beat Chicago.’ I said, ‘Ahhhh, man.’ So, make sure, man, if you’re using AI, that you fact-check.”

“You can’t trust AI,” Woodson’s colleage Charissa Thompson reiterated.

ChatGPT has a disclaimer on its website: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

NFL Broadcaster Is Only The Latest Victim Of AI

Woodson is hardly alone when it comes to sports outlets getting victimized by AI, and his instance is the most innocent of situations.  In 2023, Sports Illustrated was found to have published product reviews that were written by artificial intellegence, going so far as to have AI-generated stock photos for authors that were not real.  The magazine’s owner, The Arena Group, blamed a third party vendor for the fake reviews, but ended up firing the magazine’s CEO over it.  That same year, Gannett, owner of some of the largest newspapers in the country and now known as USA Today Co., was found to have used AI to produce high school sports game recaps in some of their papers, including The Columbus Dispatch and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  The stories were mocked for sounding like they were written by a robot, and Gannett decided to pause the program.

Give Woodson credit.  He could have just stayed quiet, and the public would not have been any wiser.  Instead, he admitted what he did, and he can use it as a learning experience for everyone in sports media.