The Wire by Acutus, an AI-generated site with articles attacking AI industry critics, appears to be funded by the OpenAI-backed super PAC Leading The Future
The reporters at this news site are AI bots. OpenAI's super PAC appears to be funding it.
@themidasproj
Context & Ripple Effects
Related coverage places The Wire within a widening set of alleged Leading The Future influence efforts: subsequent reporting connects the pro-AI super PAC to paid influencers and to purported sockpuppet accounts.
The immediate significance is not simply that the site uses AI-generated bylines, but that its attacks on industry critics may be tied to a political organization backed by OpenAI-linked figures, blurring advocacy, media, and automated content production.
First-order effects
Acutus and The Wire face an immediate credibility problem if the apparent funding link is substantiated: content presented as reporting can be read as PAC-aligned advocacy.
Leading The Future and its backers face closer scrutiny over whether AI-generated publishing is being used to amplify attacks on critics.
Second-order effects
Critics, journalists, and platforms assessing AI-policy content will have stronger reason to examine provenance, funding disclosures, and coordinated distribution rather than treating nominally independent outlets as independent.
The related reports on paid influencers and alleged sockpuppets make the funding question broader than one site, potentially raising the reputational cost of opaque pro-AI messaging networks.
Third-order effects
If such arrangements become more common, AI-policy debate could shift toward a contested information environment in which automated content, influencer payments, and political advocacy operate as a single influence stack.
That would increase pressure for clearer disclosure norms around synthetic authorship and political sponsorship, though this coverage alone does not establish how regulators or platforms will respond.
The trend: This is one data point in the convergence of AI-industry capital, political advocacy, and scalable synthetic-media distribution.
In light of all the god awful PAC behavior, I'm spending a lot of time these days thinking about what counted as bad conduct in the SB 1047 days... we really didn't know how good we had it, huh
This is pretty wild. I gotta say it's funny living in a future where a gumshoe reporter looks into a media org and discovers it's entirely run by robots.
The OpenAI PAC just confirmed that it indeed hired a PR firm that created a fake news site that ran AI-generated stories by fake reporters attacking AI safety advocates. And... they're pleading ignorance?
nice confirmation by LTF they were in fact behind the AI outlet. Gotta hate those “third party vendors” always using your money to do stuff you don't know about.
A few weeks ago, I was forwarded an email from a journalist named “Michael Chen,” asking for comment on an AI bill in Tennessee. All signs suggest Michael Chen is not a real person, and the publication he writes for is an AI content mill linked to OpenAI's super PAC. [image]
The future of journalism? The obvious extrapolation is that every lobby group does something like this soon. The more scary/interesting prospect is that *everybody* - including private citizens - will do it.
Pangram mentioned 🥳 also this is bad and OAI's lobbying effort is very clearly misaligned, part of a long line of other actions, and I'm very tired about the cope around the leadership's trustworthiness (Sam, Brockman, etc.)
This is a hilarious story about a news commentary website funded by the pro-AI PAC that turned out to be a ~total AI-generated Potemkin Village, but the best part is that the website and CMS itself were clearly vibe-coded, with sloppily exposed back-end functionality.
On the @TheMidasProj revelations re @OpenAI's Leading the Future, I legit didn't expect to see LLM grooming as becoming an issue. But here we are. A side by side from the LTF findings and the best known other example from Russian intelligence services. [image]
Looks like the OAI and a16z superpac just admitted they paid for the PR firm that is using astroturfed fake AI journalists to attack advocates? Now they want to pretend they had no idea? If you paid the contract, you are responsible for their actions.
We were not aware of this platform until we saw the article, and our organization does not use it. It appears that a third-party vendor used it without our knowledge, and their engagement with us has been terminated.
I am outraged. Last week, in the aftermath of the horrifying attack on Altman's residence, I was contacted by a “journalist”, Michael Chen, from a media called “The Wire by Acutus”. I replied to their questions and they published an article full of lies and disgusting [image]
Tbh I don't really understand why the industry is doing this. They should make convincing products, arguments, and commitments to change public opinion on AI. Don't think flooding the zone with AI slopaganda is going to help.
Imagine push journalism ...except all the “reporters” at this news site are AI bots. Even more embarrassing is the vibe coded website exposed all their internal APIs to the public, so this ended up easy to confirm. Possibly funded by the OpenAI-Andreessen-a16z super PAC... 🤔
I love how this apparent denial pretty much confirms that the platform was indeed being used by the PR firm they work with (probably in their behalf too, as would be common to limit risk to the PAC)
I think pro-AI lobbyists trying follow the crypto playbook will prove to be a mistake. Only people who own crypto really care about it politically, so being super aggro scared off politicians from interfering. AI is going to be a way bigger deal to the average voter, so the
Alongside LTF taking (or dodging?) responsibility, Acutus Wire has begun deleting articles, not just about AI but also about Crypto and Graham Platner (see image). Public archive of the articles on the site are here: https://web.archive.org/... [image]
perhaps for a moment I can be more direct, look straight into the camera and say to the stewards of the Pro-AI Party Line: You have resorted to AI slop to make your arguments. That means your views on AI are literally slop. Your. Views. Are. Slop. Everyone notices this. Those
Very very weird. There seems to be a niche PR firm that's writing slanted hits on AI safety advocates, using fake reporters to contact them. Notably the firm also works for... the leader of the a16z/OpenAI SuperPAC?