AI Personas Infiltrate Canadian Newsrooms
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Reports reveal the rise of fake AI-generated journalists used to repurpose legitimate news and deceive editors.
Artificial intelligence is being used to create fake journalist personas that infiltrate the Canadian media landscape, according to reporting from CityNews Toronto.
One such operation is We News, a site that describes itself as a "round-the-clock news portal covering Canada and the world." The site employs AI-generated staff, including editor-in-chief "Gordon Halloway" and Quebec correspondent "Geneviève Tremblay." Analysis by Originality.ai CEO Jon Gillham found that over 200 articles by Tremblay were AI-generated rewrites of stories from legitimate outlets, including CBC, CTV, CityNews, Global, the Montreal Gazette, and The Canadian Press. While We News labels its profiles as AI-generated, the site—which claims to be based in Hong Kong—has been delisted from Google search results.
Other instances involve more direct deception. Les Perreaux, editor-in-chief of Policy Options, sounded the alarm regarding a persona named "Daniel Robson." Perreaux noted that Robson refused a video call and exhibited signs of AI production. According to Türkiye Today, the Robson persona was allegedly used to attack Moroccan dissidents.
Experts warn these operations exploit the labor of real journalists for profit. Ahmed Al-Rawi, a professor at Simon Fraser University, stated that "profiteers" are repackaging news content to monetize it. Chris Arsenault, an assistant professor at Western University, noted that the low cost of AI models makes these sites difficult to regulate.
In response, Paul Deegan, president of News Media Canada, noted the difficulty of pursuing copyright lawsuits. AI Minister Evan Solomon's office issued a statement asserting that Canadians should not be deceived by content that impersonates journalists or hides its creation process.