VisionHeight, a threat intelligence firm, said it found 37 anonymous "local news" sites built to feed midterm answers to AI chatbots. It said all were registered in one evening in mid-September and cover eleven House races in seven states. Each site invites 17 named AI crawlers, programs that read the web for AI firms. CyberScoop reported on 15 October that VisionHeight now counts at least 14 states and 460 pages, including non-House races.
The sources do not say who runs the network. VisionHeight says the sites were most likely written by AI, though no single clue proves it. Evidence of effect is thin. One statewide profile ranked third on Google six days after launch. VisionHeight also told CyberScoop that Perplexity listed a Tarheel State Report page first among its sources for one answer. No source shows that any voter changed a vote.
VisionHeight argues the network assumes chatbots tend to read agreement as independence. For buyers, the lesson is that AI tools which search the web inherit its weak points: search rank, crawler permissions and news labels in hidden code. Ask vendors how they pick sources and check that they are independent. A separate NewsGuard audit, reported by Politico, found chatbots cited partisan sites styled as local news in 48% of midterm answers. Those sites were not part of this network.