AI agents at Acutus are apparently running a newsroom with no obvious humans in charge, using software to write stories, draft questions, and even pose as reporters while chasing expert quotes. That alone would be weird enough. The more interesting part is the paper trail around it: investigative reporting has tied the publication to pro-AI messaging, political amplification, and a web of connections that circles back toward OpenAI-friendly interests.
The publication launched on December 29, 2024, and a separate analysis cited in the investigation says 97 percent of its articles are fully or partly AI-generated. That is not just ”automation at the edges” – it sounds more like a content operation with a human somewhere in the background only when the machine needs a rubber stamp. The broader trend here is familiar: AI is moving from helping newsrooms write faster to impersonating the newsroom itself.
How the Acutus AI agents appear to work
Publicly accessible code reportedly exposes fields for ”background information for the AI to use when generating questions and writing the story” and ”suggested questions for the AI interviewer to ask.” The RSS feed also describes an editorial review pipeline in which five steps are involved, but only one is handled by a human. The median time for that process is 44 seconds, which is fast enough to raise a simple question: is this review, or is it a speed bump?
One of the more revealing clues is a field labeled ”aiOriginalText,” which shows machine-generated wording alongside suggested edits. That suggests the site is not merely using AI as a drafting tool. It is letting software take on the voice of a journalist, then polishing the result just enough to make it look conventional.
The fake reporter problem
Model Republic says it found an email sent to Nathan Calvin, vice president and general counsel of the advocacy group Encode, from someone claiming to be an Acutus reporter named Michael Chen. The pitch asked for a written Q&A on an AI bill in Tennessee, but searches turned up no real reporter by that name, and the message came from ”reporter@acutuswire.com.” That is a classic tell: generic address, invented persona, and a publication claiming more staff than it can credibly demonstrate.
There is a practical reason this matters beyond journalistic etiquette. AI-generated outreach can harvest expert quotes at scale, which means one operator can simulate an entire beat with a fraction of the labor. Traditional outlets are under pressure from the same economics, but most still have a human editor visible somewhere in the chain. Acutus seems to be stripping even that away.
The OpenAI connection is circumstantial, but noisy
The reported ties to OpenAI are not presented as a clean smoking gun. They are more like a cluster of smoke alarms going off at once. Acutus has been boosted on social media by Patrick Hynes, president of the Republican public relations firm Novus Public Affairs, and Novus works for Targeted Victory, whose CEO, Zac Moffatt, also co-founded the $125 million super PAC Leading The Future, funded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman.
That does not prove direct control. It does suggest a pipeline where favorable AI coverage can travel through political and media-adjacent channels with suspicious ease. If you were designing a machine to launder advocacy through ”independent journalism,” you could do worse than a site that lets software write the story and the pitch email.
- Launch date: December 29, 2024
- AI-generated or AI-assisted articles: 97 percent, according to Pangram analysis cited in the report
- Median editorial review time: 44 seconds
- Human review steps in the reported workflow: 1 of 5
Why this is a bigger warning sign than another content mill
We have seen plenty of AI sludge farms. What makes this one sharper is the combination of newsroom cosplay and political messaging. One Acutus piece reportedly attacked AI safety advocate and journalist John Sherman over remarks about data centers, then contacted organizations tied to his consulting work to ask whether they would keep working with him. That is not just reporting; that is pressure dressed up as byline theater.
The timing is awkward for OpenAI, too. The company has already started pushing deeper into media, including buying the tech talk show TPBN last month. That puts it in the company of other giants that eventually decided the press was easier to acquire, influence, or imitate than ignore. The open question now is whether Acutus is an oddity, a test case, or a template others will copy once the embarrassment fades.