Local News: AI Chatbots Cite Fake News Sites Promoting Democrats

Voters in central Florida and beyond are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to vet candidates, but a new review suggests some of the most cited sources are not newsrooms at all. They are political advertisements disguised as local reporting.

The network consists of 37 websites, all of which were registered on September 15. Most of the domains were created within an eight-minute window, according to registry data analyzed by the digital security firm VisionHeight. The sites are divided into distinct categories. Ten of them pose as local news outlets covering specific congressional districts. Another 12 focus on state-level politics, while the remainder publish opinion pieces or roundup articles about Democratic candidates.

The sites are heavily skewed toward one party. Each of the ten local-style websites features only one Democrat, who is the subject of every article on the site. For example, the Kalamazoo Beacon, a site dedicated to Michigan’s 4th Congressional District, has published 16 stories. All 16 focus on Democratic candidate Sean McCann, his policy positions, and his record as a state legislator. The site’s source code identifies the content as news articles, yet the outlet has produced no other reporting on the region.

When NPR tested the influence of these sites on AI chatbots, the results were striking. In 19 of 37 queries sent to ChatGPT, the bot cited at least one article from this network. In 17 of those instances, the citation came from one of the ten sites pretending to be local news. The chatbot frequently placed these sites at the top of its answer list, sometimes ahead of established sources like Ballotpedia. For instance, when asked which House candidate in Michigan’s 4th District cares about affordability, ChatGPT cited the Kalamazoo Beacon and stated that McCann had the most detailed published affordability plan.

The websites appear engineered to be easily scraped by AI tools. All 37 sites explicitly allow a long list of AI crawlers to access their content, a move many traditional news organizations avoid. They also include a file called llms.txt, which lists articles in plain text for machine consumption. The volume of content, with hundreds of articles appearing in batches during September and October, suggests the operator may have used AI to generate the material.

It remains unclear who operates the network. Neither the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee nor several Democratic super PACs, including American Bridge 21st Century, confirmed involvement. One candidate promoted by the sites, Arizona’s JoAnna Mendoza, said she was not behind the websites. OpenAI spokesperson Nate Evans said the company takes action when issues are brought to its attention. Google spokesperson Davis Thompson said the company detected a policy violation in one instance and took swift action. As of late October, the Kalamazoo Beacon remained a frequent citation in ChatGPT responses regarding McCann.