How to spot AI-generated news sites

AI-generated news sites look like ordinary news outlets: a masthead, a navigation bar of sections, a column of headlines. Underneath, there are no reporters. Stories are rewritten from other outlets by a language model, published in volume, and wrapped in ads. Some are merely low quality; others have published invented events and false claims. Media watchdogs, NewsGuard among them, have catalogued well over a thousand such sites in many languages.

Here is how to tell them apart from real journalism.

Seven checks

1. Who runs it? Real outlets have an About page that names the publisher, the editor and a physical address. Generated sites have none, or a vague mission statement.
2. Who wrote this? Click the byline. Real reporters have a list of past work and a presence elsewhere. Generated sites use "Staff", "Admin" or names that lead nowhere.
3. How much does it publish? A small team can't publish hundreds of stories a day across every topic. If the site does, look harder.
4. Is the news original? Search a distinctive sentence or the headline. If the same story appeared hours earlier at a known outlet, the site may be rewriting it, sometimes without credit.
5. Chatbot leftovers. Phrases like As of my last update, I cannot browse the internet or Certainly! Here is a news article have appeared on published "news" pages. They're conclusive.
6. Does it publish corrections? Real newsrooms correct mistakes publicly. A site with no corrections policy and no corrections is not accountable to anyone.
7. The name. Generic names that sound local or official, like "[City] Daily Times" or "Global News Wire", on a site registered recently. Check the domain's age with a whois search.

Why they exist

Mostly money: news-style pages attract search and social traffic, and programmatic ads pay per view. Some are also used to spread political or commercial messages, which is where invented stories come from. AI made both cheaper: a site that once needed writers now needs only a script and a hosting account.

Tools that help

• Lateral reading: open a new tab and search what others say about the site, rather than judging it by its own pages.
• Media ratings services such as NewsGuard rate news sites for reliability.
• Fact-checkers often cover stories that went viral from unreliable sites.

How the site was built

Many generated news sites run on ordinary publishing software, so their build often looks normal. Others are spun up with AI app builders and carry the usual fingerprints, covered in how to tell if a website was made with AI. The content tells, including the chatbot leftovers above, are covered in what is AI slop?

Kitsuvo, our no-AI web browser, labels mass-produced pages as slop, with evidence such as pasted chatbot text and unfilled template slots, and filters likely AI-built results out of your searches. It runs on your computer.