After only a few months of operation, Prism News’s network of more than 200 AI-generated publications – posing as local newsrooms and hobby sites – has closed.
This includes the local “AI-powered newsroom” Prism Grand Traverse County, which produced news articles about northwest Michigan. As IPR reported in July, that coverage was created using artificial intelligence to aggregate news from local outlets and repurpose Prism’s slightly-altered articles under new bylines.
None of those bylines belonged to real people. Instead, they represented “AI-personas.” One of those personas even carried the title “Dr.” — Elena Rodriguez.
When Prism announced its launch in May, the Israel-based start up poised itself as an answer to news deserts across the United States. Despite that, Prism produced no original news coverage of its own.
Now, where Prism used to have hundreds of sites and thousands of articles, their website is empty with a line of text that reads, “We have currently completed our initial experiment. A big thank you to all who participated and gave their feedback. All activity is suspended for the foreseeable future.”
Facebook pages for Prism newsrooms across the country — including sites for Grand Traverse and Iron County — have been cleared of months of links to their news articles and short form content.
IPR has reached out to Prism for comment but has not received any response at the time of publishing.
