Google News Promotes AI-Generated “News”
PLUS: Ukraine’s Fictional “Kill List”; A New AI News Site Hides Its Connection to Trump’s Former Campaign Manager
Welcome to NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Google News boosts AI content farms
Members of Congress fooled into believing Ukraine has a “kill list”
Unmasking a news site linked to Trump's former campaign manager
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
1. Google News Promotes “News” From Dozens of AI-Generated Content Farms
By Jack Brewster, Isaiah Glick, and Kate Reynolds
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What happened: News from AI-generated “content farms” is appearing on one of the world’s most popular news aggregators, competing with traditional news outlets for clicks and ads.
NewsGuard has identified 54 AI content farms whose articles, sometimes appearing by the dozens, have been aggregated by Google News.
Although this represents only 6 percent of the 957 AI-generated content farms identified by NewsGuard, the number of these sites approved by Google to be part of its Google News service appears to be growing.
What is an AI content farm, you ask? Imagine a puppy mill or a sweatshop, but for news articles.
These low-cost websites are designed to maximize output and rake in ad dollars, and AI has now turbocharged them.
AI content farms often have generic and deceptive names such as InternationalNewsandViews.com, IHeartDogs.com, and ScoopEarth.com, and churn out articles at scale without any human oversight.
Most of their articles are merely AI-rewritten versions of mainstream news articles (produced by, yes, humans), often without crediting the original source.
Some even contain the classic AI error messages you'd expect from chatbots, such as “I’m sorry, but my programming doesn’t allow me to answer that.”
To learn more about how NewsGuard defines an AI content farm, click here.
As for Google News…
Surprising fact: Google News is the 93rd most visited site in the U.S., according to data tracking tool SimilarWeb.
The platform is also a huge driver of traffic to news sites. According to data provided to NewsGuard by Newzdash, a news analytics platform, Google News accounts for an average of 6 percent of global publishers’ total Google search traffic.
An August 2023 Newzdash blog post stated that for some top publishers, up to 18 percent of their Google search traffic comes from Google News.
A closer look: Google states that to appear on its News platform, a site must adhere to its anti-spam policies.
These policies state that a site must not engage in what it calls "scaled content abuse," which includes "using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users."
Nevertheless, some of the AI-generated sites on Google News appear to be breaking that policy and have a documented history of using AI to generate articles at scale.
For example, 100 articles published by GlobalVillageSpace.com, an AI-generated site identified by NewsGuard that appears to be run by a Pakistani news anchor named Moeed Pirzada, have appeared on Google News since 2017.
In November 2023, the site was the source of a viral false claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a psychiatrist who committed suicide, as first reported by NewsGuard and subsequently, by The Washington Post (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100).
That article, presented as news on Google News, was later labeled “satire” by GlobalVillageSpace.com after NewsGuard published its report.
Asked by NewsGuard about the presence of AI content farms on its platform, a Google spokesperson said, “While people can find certain results if they specifically search for them, we keep the vast majority of low-quality, spammy content out of our top results. Where there are violations of our policies, we take swift action, and we continue to invest in advanced systems to prevent spam and low-quality content from surfacing.”
Go deeper: Of the 54 AI content farms NewsGuard found on Google News, 80 percent (43) earn revenue from programmatic advertising. Programmatic ad tools automatically serve hyper-targeted ads to readers through algorithms regardless of the quality of the news source.
This means that Google is helping AI content farms earn revenue for spreading automated, low-quality content that is often lifted from human publishers who did not get those ads.
Disclosure: NewsGuard sells data to news aggregators and search engines, including data about AI-generated news sites and AI content farms.
AI Content Farm Tracker: 957 Sites and Counting
AI content farms are taking over the internet, and NewsGuard analysts track their spread. Read more about AI content farms, and how they are proliferating:
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
2. GOP Reps Fall For Ukraine “Enemies List”
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In a plot twist worthy of a political thriller, two Republican lawmakers are claiming they've been cast as villains on a Ukrainian "enemies list" or “kill list.”
What happened: On June 8, 2024, Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Banks posted on X that he had been added to the Ukrainian government’s “enemies list.” Two days later, another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, claimed on X that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had placed her on the “state KILL list.”
And off it goes: The claim about this purported list quickly spread on X – on accounts that had previously voiced opposition to U.S. aid to Ukraine.
“Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) says he was just notified that his name, along with many others in Congress, is on a secret ‘enemies list’ compiled by the Ukrainian government,” Natural News (Trust Score: 5/100) stated in a June 12, 2024, article. “The regime of Volodymyr Zelensky considers Banks and the other names on the list to be unfriendly because of their opposition to more funding and weapons being sent to Kiev.”
“Zelensky’s people just put together a Soviet style enemies ‘list’ of conservatives who are asking questions about where our money is going,” Chanel Rion, a commentator on the conservative One America News Network (Trust Score: 25/100), posted on X.
Actually: Natural News, OAN, and the X accounts presented no evidence that the Ukrainian government has produced such a list.
The claims seem to stem from a June 6, 2024, report on an NGO-run Ukrainian site, Texty.org.ua, which focused on Americans who publicly oppose U.S. aid to Ukraine.
The report did not label these people and organizations as an "enemies list" or a "kill list."
Moreover, there is no evidence that Texty or its report is tied to the Ukrainian government.
Roman Kulchynsky, Texty.org.ua’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, told Newsweek (Trust Score: 100/100) that the nonprofit outlet “never take[s] money from the Ukrainian government.”
Sound Familiar? At NewsGuard, the “kill list” is a well-worn false narrative.
In August 2023, pro-Kremlin news sites claimed that Ukraine added Pope Francis to its ‘‘kill list” after he urged Ukraine and Russia to hold peace talks
And in February 2024, low-quality news sources including The People’s Voice (Trust Score: 0/100) claimed that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was added to the list after he presented Russia in an exceedingly positive light during a reporting trip for his popular X channel.
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3. And One More Thing … AI and the Hidden Agenda: Unmasking a News Site Linked to Trump's Former Campaign Manager
What happened: A new AI-generated news site is churning out right-leaning news articles without disclosing its affiliation to a political consulting firm run by Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
The site, MIGReports.com (Trust Score: 52/100), launched in 2023 and publishes right-leaning news and analysis based on social media trends. (Reality Check premium subscribers can access the newly-published Nutrition Label for MIGReports.com by clicking here.)
A NewsGuard review of domain registration records and IP addresses found that MIGReports was registered by the same account that was used to register CampaignNucleus.com, the site of a political consulting firm owned by Brad Parscale, who served as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign manager in 2020.
A closer look: The site uses AI to analyze public sentiment from social media posts, claiming to provide real-time public opinion based on geographic and demographic data.
This use of AI is designed to mirror the work Parscale did for Trump, focusing on hyper-targeted political messaging.
MIGReports.com frequently publishes content supporting Republican campaigns and criticizing Democrats, without disclosing its political ties. Articles often highlight public reactions to political events, but consistently favor Republican narratives.
The site also does not disclose when the subject of its stories are clients of Parscale’s consulting firm Campaign Nucleus.
If you see something, say something
If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
Reality Check is produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.