Scammers stole actual journalists' identities and used AI to create fake news stories and mislead readers in Oregon.
As Investigate West reported, the scammers took over a 140-year-old newspaper called the Ashland Daily Tidings. This newspaper was once a legitimate news source but closed operations in 2023.
Artificial intelligence invaders have been emerging onto local news scenes, with websites hiding who is producing them. They are impersonating actual reporters and spreading misinformation driven by advertising dollars.
Oregon Public Broadcasting attempted to track down the supposed Daily Tidings reporters and found evidence of plagiarism and falsified identities. To create fake news, hackers stole journalists' works and slightly tweaked sentences to republish on their scam site.
"They just put it in a blender and then pour it out on their page," Bert Etling, the former editor of the Daily Tidings who now runs the Ashland News, said. "It's maddening."
Not only are scammers' AI-produced new stories illegal, but they are also a waste of AI resources. Producing AI content requires significant energy, water, and other limited, costly resources.
AI algorithms have been criticized across various industries for promoting harmful biases and sharing dangerously inaccurate information. Tech experts are also concerned about the massive amounts of energy AI requires, especially when it benefits no one and creates public harm and distrust.
Local journalism is worth saving from AI scams for the sake of fact-based reporting, relevant perspectives, and climate sustainability. Even in our modern digital age, there is real value in telling community stories from within communities and making meaningful connections based on truth.
Oregonians were shocked to learn that their trusted news source had been hacked and that real journalists are facing threats from AI.
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"It's not going to replace meaningful work. It can't do human connection. But it does make the ability to flood the zone with s*** so much easier for bad actors," Bryan Vance, the director of digital strategy for City Cast in Portland, said via LinkedIn.
"If you spend any time around AI for writing, it becomes clear who's using it to help make their articles better and who's just being lazy and trying to use it to write the article for them," a Reddit user commented.
Another Redditor wrote, "Having local, independent journalism is important even if viewed purely from an economic point of view — it saves us all money."
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