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Caitlin Clark called out an Indiana Fever Instagram post Thursday that was made with AI tools.
The since-removed slide showed Clark and her teammate Aliyah Boston, but mangled Clark’s hand in a way that she instantly recognized. She left a comment that read “New hand alert.” (Her comment is still visible on the post.)
A source familiar with the matter told Front Office Sports that the error with Clark’s hand came from using an AI tool in an attempt to combine an image of Clark with a separate image of Boston. The tool comes from a design software that the source declined to name specifically.
The Fever are not the only professional sports team to use AI in their creative content, even amid a trend of teams claiming on social media their graphics were not made with AI. Two teams that made such claims, the Winnipeg Jets and the St. Louis Blues, plan to use or currently use AI in their work.
“While we do not currently use AI in our content creation, we are open to the possibility of employing AI as an additional tool to enhance our efforts to engage with our fans,” a Jets spokesperson told FOS. “Alongside our broader organization, our content team is exploring the capabilities and potential in this growing space.”
The Jets declined to share what specifically they planned to use AI for. Meanwhile, a source told FOS that the Blues—who don’t have a formal AI policy for content creation—still use AI in various ways alongside human work by designers.
These posts are part of a larger discussion surrounding sports graphics and AI, which was sparked by the April 21 release of ChatGPT Images 2.0 that advanced the software’s ability to create graphics.
Viral social media posts with ChatGPT-generated sports graphics received pushback from both professional graphic designers and sports team accounts alike, though some said that AI needed to be used in some capacity.
“If you are a creative and not actively learning to incorporate AI into your workflow, you are getting left behind,” Chad Morehead, Georgia’s assistant athletic director of creative strategy, wrote in an X post. “That doesn’t mean I think creatives are cooked, but as with all advances in tech, adapt or die. It’s a tool; learn to use it.”
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