The 'Kalamazoo Beacon' Published 16 Stories, All About One Candidate. ChatGPT Cited It Anyway

Here's a new way to fake the news: build a website that looks like a local paper, fill it with stories about one candidate, and let the AI chatbots do the rest. NPR found ChatGPT citing exactly that kind of site when asked about competitive House races.

The example: asked which candidates in Michigan's 4th District care about affordability, ChatGPT put Democrat Sean McCann at the top and cited the "Kalamazoo Beacon." The Beacon has published 16 stories. All of them are about McCann. It's one of 10 fake-local sites each promoting a single Democrat, part of 37 sites a security firm called VisionHeight tied together. They were all set up Sept. 15, and all but one were registered within eight minutes.

The sites roll out the welcome mat for AI crawlers and write in question-and-answer format, the kind chatbots like to quote. NPR says Google's products avoided promoting them. Nobody's claiming them: one candidate told NPR she doesn't know who's behind it, and the DCCC denied involvement.

Dez's take: I don't care which party it helps. Dressing up an ad as a local newspaper is a con, and it works because real local papers got gutted and people still trust the format. If your chatbot sends you to a 'Beacon' you've never heard of, look for a masthead, a phone number and a reporter's name. Missing all three? That's your answer.

What we still don't know: who paid for the 37 sites.