AI ‘journalists’ rewrite Canadian news as We News personas draw Ottawa’s warning

Fake AI “journalists” are already filing under Canadian bylines — and, in at least one case, openly advertising that they are not human — according to a Canadian Press investigation published Oct. 3 that probes how generative models are being used to repackage legitimate reporting at industrial scale.

Hong Kong–based We News presents itself as a round-the-clock portal covering Canada and the world. Its profiles — including Quebec correspondent “Geneviève Tremblay” and grey-haired editor-in-chief “Gordon Halloway” — are labelled AI-generated, yet the site rewrites international, national and local stories for more than 100 Canadian cities. When CP messaged the personas via chat, it received automated error replies; the contact email on the site bounced. Detection firm Originality.ai reviewed just over 200 Tremblay articles and flagged them as AI-generated rewrites of CBC, CTV, CityNews, Global, the Montreal Gazette and Canadian Press copy, CEO Jon Gillham told CP, warning such “AI slop” risks eroding trust in news.

A separate deception case sharpened the alarm. Policy Options editor-in-chief Les Perreaux sounded the warning after a Türkiye Today editor asked him to vouch for “Daniel Robson,” who refused a video call; Canadian outlets later pulled Robson bylines, and Türkiye Today said the persona appeared aimed at attacking Moroccan dissidents. Nunatsiaq News earlier reported an AI persona posing as an Inuk journalist in Nunavut tied to the same We News ecosystem. Simon Fraser University professor Ahmed Al-Rawi told CP that profiteers are “exploiting the hard work of real journalists,” while News Media Canada president Paul Deegan said copyright suits are slow and costly when operators may not be in Canada, and urged Ottawa not to create a broad text-and-data-mining copyright exception.

AI Minister Evan Solomon’s office said Canadians “deserve to know when the information they consume has been generated or altered by AI” and must not be deceived by content that “impersonates journalists.” Google told CP its policies prohibit low-value content produced at scale to game rankings; We News appeared delisted from Google Search in CP’s checks while still ranking elsewhere. Western University journalism professor Chris Arsenault said regulation is hard when cheap models and offshore hosts abound — and that the Robson case broke because an editor simply picked up the phone.

Sources: CityNews / Canadian Press; Global News / Canadian Press; Lethbridge Herald / CP.