I believe you’re thinking of two stories that appeared in Asimov’s collection Nightfall and Other Stories.
One is “Eyes Do More Than See.” Playboy had invited Asimov to submit a short story based upon a photograph, but rejected it. He mentioned that he submitted it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and it first appeared there because F&SF worked fairly quickly and Playboy was very slow. Asimov said other writers were invited to submit stories based on the photo, and he considered writing a letter pointing out that his story appeared before theirs.
The other is “What is This Thing Called Love?” (original title: “Playboy and the Slime Gods.”) Asimov stated Playboy wrote an article spoofing science fiction as being heavily about sex, and largely quoted a 1930’s pulp called something like Spicy Science Fiction. Asimov stated that he was annoyed by the parody and wrote a parody of Playboy’s article. “What is This Thing Called Love?” is really funny; among other things, Playboy is parodied as Recreation Lad.
I seem to remember “Stroker Ace” and “Semi-Tough” from Playboy before the movies came out.
I am most familiar with Playboy from the early 70s to early 80s.
I readily admit that I loved it a lot for the ladies and nudity contained within, but many of the articles, stories, and cartoons/humor were every bit as good. Some of the best short stories I ever read were in the pages of Playboy.
At my undergrad uni in Texas, I had a campus job in the library, in the Microforms and Periodicals section. We had the Rare Book Room, and that is where we housed the Playboy magazines. Each year’s worth were bound into a single volume, the most recent year still being paper. But they were kept in the Rare Book Room to prevent them being stolen and defiled by horny students in that pre-Internet age. However, the oldest volumes had had all the pictures of naughty bits summarily censored by a prudish old-lady librarian.