--- title: The reporters at this news site are AI bots. OpenAI’s... description: An investigation reveals that Acutus (AcutusWire.com), an anonymously operated news site launched in late 2025, uses AI bots posing as reporters to generate... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-reporters-at-this-news-site-are-ai-bots-openai-s-super-pac-appears-to-be-funding-it--bsxxmcpvi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The reporters at this news site are AI bots. OpenAI’s super PAC appears to be funding it. | daily.dev og:description: An investigation reveals that Acutus (AcutusWire.com), an anonymously operated news site launched in late 2025, uses AI bots posing as reporters to generate... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-reporters-at-this-news-site-are-ai-bots-openai-s-super-pac-appears-to-be-funding-it--bsxxmcpvi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/bSXxmCPVi.png og:image:alt: The reporters at this news site are AI bots. OpenAI’s super PAC appears to be funding it. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The reporters at this news site are AI bots. OpenAI’s super PAC appears to be funding it. **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An investigation reveals that Acutus (AcutusWire.com), an anonymously operated news site launched in late 2025, uses AI bots posing as reporters to generate and publish articles. Analysis of the site's exposed JavaScript code and public API shows 97% of its 94 articles are AI-generated, with an automated editorial pipeline that publishes pieces even when the AI flags them as needing revision. The site's AI 'reporter agent' sends interview requests to real people under fake human names. Tracing the funding chain links Acutus to Novus Public Affairs, whose client list includes Targeted Victory — the GOP consulting firm at the center of OpenAI's $125 million super PAC, Leading The Future. The site's AI-focused articles consistently push anti-AI-regulation talking points aligned with OpenAI's political agenda, suggesting OpenAI's super PAC may be using AI-generated fake journalism to advance its political interests, in apparent violation of OpenAI's own usage policies. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 105 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-03). **TL;DR:** The HN community is largely skeptical and critical, debating whether a surge in AI-positive posts and comments on HN reflects genuine enthusiasm, coordinated astroturfing by OpenAI and allies, or both — while a minority defends AI's real utility and pushes back on conspiracy framing. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 25% mixed · 65% skeptical **The case for** - Some commenters report genuine productivity gains from AI coding tools, including running parallel cloud agents and reviewing AI-generated PRs. - AI model pricing has effectively dropped significantly when measured by capability per dollar over the past year. - Open-source and self-hostable models (Qwen, Gemma, llama.cpp) provide real value independent of big-company pricing. - A few commenters note that LLMs have meaningfully improved since 2023, making skepticism from that era less applicable today. **The pushback** - AI-generated code is too voluminous to fully review, leading to skill atrophy and disconnection from one's own codebase. - The article's evidence linking the fake news site to OpenAI is considered weak and speculative by several commenters. - AI content detectors like Pangram are widely regarded as unreliable, undermining the article's key methodology. - HN's AI topic metrics (hundreds of upvotes vs. typical posts) are seen as suspicious and potentially manipulated. - Exaggerated productivity claims like '100x' are viewed as damaging to credible discourse and possibly bot-driven. - OpenAI's alleged AI-generated news site attacking critics is seen as part of a broader coordinated marketing/astroturfing campaign. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Commenters are predominantly critical of AI hype and suspected astroturfing on HN itself, with heated debate about whether pro-AI voices are genuine users, bots, or paid shills, and skepticism about the article's evidentiary standards. **Hottest debate:** Whether the surge of pro-AI sentiment on HN represents genuine updated beliefs or coordinated astroturfing by AI companies, with accusations of bot accounts flying in both directions. **Open questions** - Is there a viable legal fraud case under state law against OpenAI or similar companies for undisclosed AI-generated influence campaigns? - What would HN's own internal stats (new accounts, post origins) reveal about the demographic shift in its user base since 2022? - How reliable are AI content detectors like Pangram in practice, and can they be used as credible evidence? - Will AI model pricing continue to fall, or will infrastructure costs eventually force a correction? **Highlights** > > When I ran the message through Pangram, an AI content detector that credibly claims a near-zero false-positive rate, the email came back as “fully AI-generated.” Uh huh.. AI content detectors don't work. This article plays right into my biases but I don't think it's actually very credible? They're just guessing that some unknown blog is funded by OpenAI because it has maybe-AI-generated articles that use similar talking points "These are the talking points of Leading The Future, the $125 million super PAC funded primarily by OpenAI president Greg Brockman" I'm sure OpenAI is doing a tonne of astroturfing but my god this is weak > — [tripleee on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151765) > I'm using AI in many ways but I'm not ignoring that it has some real costs. The code AI writes is too voluminous to fully review. I'm quite disconnected from it, and probably won't be able to maintain it myself. The more we use AI to code, the more our real skills atrophy (already feeling that). And when AI pricing finally catches up with the astronomical spending going into it, people are going to have a rude awakening. Nothing good is coming from any of this, unless you're able to cash in before the economy collapses when this bubble finally bursts. > — [leptons on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151679) > > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151741 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151732 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151719 Multiple comments made by this account in a timeframe I at least would personally have a hard time reading the comment I’m responding to and then and replying to this quickly, and from an account made in 2025. Kind of making the point for the people you disagree with, assuming you are an actual human and not a bot tasked with pushing a narrative. > — [lovich on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151770) > What's missing is a balanced view. People are easily divided and suddenly in a binary position. You're either totally pro AI and can't stop talking about it all the time, it's like your new god. Or you're a hater. And old-school person, who deceived themselves and got a good portion of their self-worth from typing strange invocations in an even stranger electronic device. Both are bullshit, but if you're not in either camp you get flack from both. My (!) reality is that it's useful technology, but far from the claims that were made by the people trying to sell (!) it. I've seen quite some improvements over the years, but I haven't seen the claims materialized in any release in the last 18+ months. Yes, it's impressive, yes, it's probably here to stay in some form or another. But it's not Skynet, GLaDOS or even HAL ... > — [OtomotO on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151901) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150561) · 87 points · 105 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935477) · 3 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Advertisers are trying to influence AI bots with secret ads](https://daily.dev/posts/advertisers-are-trying-to-influence-ai-bots-with-secret-ads-8rofiady9) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Download: political chatbot persuasion, and gene editing adverts](https://daily.dev/posts/the-download-political-chatbot-persuasion-and-gene-editing-adverts-povud4jza) · MIT Technology Review · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened](https://daily.dev/posts/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-more-things-have-happened-trgm5t3x9) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [300 publishers take their fight against AI stealth bots to Congress](https://daily.dev/posts/300-publishers-take-their-fight-against-ai-stealth-bots-to-congress-9ux4sa3eq) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Schneier on Security](https://daily.dev/posts/schneier-on-security-ethiilnb5) · Schneier on Security · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-reporters-at-this-news-site-are-ai-bots-openai-s-super-pac-appears-to-be-funding-it--bsxxmcpvi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The reporters at this news site are AI bots. 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