Investigation finds news site tied to OpenAI-backed super PAC used AI bots posing as journalists

An investigation has found that a news website called The Wire by Acutus published 94 articles since late December using a fully automated pipeline that drafts stories, reviews them, and deploys bots to solicit quotes from real people under fake bylines. The investigation was published on Friday by Tyler Johnston, executive director of the AI safety nonprofit The Midas Project, in Model Republic. Johnston found that 69% of the site's articles were entirely machine-generated, with another 28% partially so. The site's publicly accessible JavaScript and API endpoints exposed the entire content production system. The site is built as a React application, and its client-side JavaScript contains elements of an internal editorial dashboard that were not intended to be public-facing. Fields in the dashboard include "AI Background Context," described as background material for the AI to draw on when producing questions and writing stories, and a large "Generate Story Draft" button that automates article creation. A separate "Regenerate" function allows operators to re-run the process if the output is unsatisfactory. The site's API returned not just finished articles but the full internal record of how each piece was produced. That record includes an automated multi-pass editorial review scored across categories like AP style compliance, quote accuracy, and source verification. Johnston reported that the median time between the first review issue being resolved and the last was 44 seconds, with publication typically following 10 seconds later. Of the 94 stories in the database, 42 carried an automated status of "needs_revision" from the site's own AI reviewer, but all 42 were published regardless. The investigation began when Nathan Calvin, vice president and general counsel at AI advocacy group Encode, received a press inquiry from a reporter named Michael Chen. The email looked slightly off, featuring loaded questions with the only format offered being a written Q&A. Calvin forwarded it to Johnston, who ran it through an AI detection tool. The email, the reporter, and nearly every article on the publication turned out to be machine-generated. Johnston traced a connection between Acutus and OpenAI's political operation. The site had almost no public profile, and its articles had been shared on X only four times, but roughly half of that engagement came from a single person: Patrick Hynes, president of the PR firm Novus Public Affairs. Novus lists Targeted Victory among its clients. Targeted Victory is the Republican consulting firm whose CEO, Zac Moffatt, co-founded Leading The Future, a $125 million super PAC backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The super PAC launched in August 2025 with the stated goal of opposing state-level AI regulation and supporting pro-AI candidates. According to Johnston, Hynes appeared as a quoted source in an Acutus article, praising a New Hampshire governor's housing policy on behalf of Novus, with no disclosure that his firm appeared to be operating the publication that was quoting him. The site's content followed no coherent editorial identity but instead closely mirrored what a PR firm's client roster might produce, Johnston wrote, with articles favorable to the pharmaceutical industry, the cryptocurrency lobby, and multiple 2026 Republican Senate campaigns appearing alongside pro-AI policy coverage.