A Florida news website that presented itself as a legitimate local journalism outlet has been shut down following an investigation that exposed its use of fake AI-generated reporters and stolen content from established media sources. Even the site’s editor-in-chief was generated by AI, according to the investigation.
The Florida Trib reports that the South Florida Standard, which until recently published regular updates on local news covering politics, economics, sports, tourism, environmental issues, and technology, has been taken offline after an investigation revealed the operation to be what reporter Kate Payne described as a “digital mirage masquerading as local news.”
The investigation uncovered that the website’s purported staff of local journalists were entirely fictional, created using AI. The fake reporters featured AI-generated headshots and fabricated biographies filled with South Florida references, with their bylines appearing on articles plagiarized from legitimate news outlets, processed through AI systems, and republished.
Among the fabricated staff members was Sofia Delgado, who was presented as the site’s editor-in-chief. Her biography described her as a bilingual mother of two raised in Hialeah, complete with a professional headshot showing a smiling woman. However, no such person exists. Other fictional reporters included Grant Hollister, listed as a business and real estate reporter, and DJ Lattimore, identified as a sports reporter.
Investigators searching for any trace of these reporters online found only scattered social media profiles with identical copied biographies across various platforms, but no posts, updates, or evidence of actual human activity behind the stock photo-style images.
When Florida Trib reporters began their investigation into the South Florida Standard, the site’s administrators responded by modifying content and removing staff biographies before ultimately taking the entire website offline.
According to Payne’s report, much of the content published by the South Florida Standard appeared to have been stolen from Florida Politics, a website operated by publisher Peter Schorsch, whose political coverage has become essential reading for many insiders and journalists in the state.
Schorsch told The Florida Trib in an email that the Standard represents one of several sites he has identified as engaging in what he termed “plAIgiarising” his content. He explained that AI bots pose a “definite threat” to his outlet because they scrape large volumes of content simultaneously, which can temporarily overwhelm his website and prevent legitimate readers from accessing it.
Despite these concerns, Schorsch expressed confidence in his publication’s future viability. “AI and these sham sites capture none of the nuance of real-world politics,” Schorsch said. He added, “My real fear is that if the next generation of bots scrape info from these scammy sites to build their [large language models], the answers people will get about political news will be of the lowest common denominator. It will be a copy of a copy of a copy of a fax sent to your phone.”
When initially contacted, the South Florida Standard admitted to using AI technology. “All names on our site are randomly-generated by artificial intelligence” and any apparent connections to real people “are coincidental,” they stated. The statement continued, “South Florida Standard has no corporate owner. It is a website we’re developing with the intent of building search engine authority and selling to a domain investor who may use it to develop a news property or newsletter or similar digital property. This is common in the SEO community.”
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Read more at Florida Trib here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.