OpenAI super PAC funds AI newsroom

The Verge reported that a pro-AI political network tied to OpenAI may be bankrolling a “news” site whose listed reporters appear to be fake, AI-generated people. (theverge.com) The site is The Wire by Acutus. The Verge said advocacy group Encode received an interview request from a reporter named Michael Chen, then found that Chen and other bylines on the site likely do not correspond to real journalists. (theverge.com) The funding trail points to Leading the Future, a super PAC network launched in 2025 to back candidates aligned with the artificial intelligence industry. Public reporting has identified OpenAI president Greg Brockman as one of its major donors. (axios.com) (notus.org) NOTUS reported in January that Leading the Future had raised more than $125 million for the 2026 midterms. That puts the Acutus story inside a much larger campaign to shape federal and state rules on data centers, privacy, energy use and artificial intelligence oversight. (axios.com) (notus.org) The concern is not just that a political group may be funding media-style content. It is that the site presents itself as reported journalism while using invented identities and publishing material that The Verge said often favors the AI industry and attacks its critics. (theverge.com) At nearly the same time, OpenAI was dealing with a separate failure involving its own chatbot and a real-world mass shooting in Canada. On April 24 and 25, multiple outlets published Sam Altman’s apology to the community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. (cbsnews.com) (techcrunch.com) (tumblerridgelines.com) Altman wrote that OpenAI had banned Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account in June 2025 after violent chats were flagged, but did not alert law enforcement. Van Rootselaar later carried out the February 10, 2026 shooting in Tumbler Ridge that killed eight people. (cbsnews.com) (cbc.ca) OpenAI has said the account did not meet its threshold at the time for an imminent-threat referral to police. After the shooting, the company said it contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and is changing how it decides when to escalate cases to authorities. (cbsnews.com) (techcrunch.com) British Columbia Premier David Eby said Altman’s apology was “necessary” but “grossly insufficient.” Canadian officials have also said they are considering new artificial intelligence rules after the Tumbler Ridge case. (techcrunch.com) (ipolitics.ca) Taken together, the Acutus story and the Tumbler Ridge apology show the same pressure point from different directions: once AI companies move into politics, media and safety enforcement, disclosure choices and escalation rules stop looking like back-office decisions. (theverge.com) (cbsnews.com)