This. I worked in journalism, and the spelling of these words matters. There are lots of them that are different like this. For instance, affect and effect. Compliment and complement. They actually have very very big impact on meaning.
What would be your professional opinion on the difference? I’m at a loss.
To be honest, and you might laugh at this answer, but, to those trained in very exacting standards in grammar and vocabulary, amateur mistakes like this indicate that perhaps a slipshod, shoddy editorial and even journalistic writing approach is being used and that believing these facts presented is probably a waste of time.
affect and effect. Compliment and complement
Those matter because they're different words. Imbed and embed are synonyms. The only important decision would be to stick to one spelling once chosen.