AI Campaign Tool Rewrites User’s Opposition to Paramount-Warner Merger

Summary

A campaign website called Neighbors for Strong Communities asked users to contact California Attorney General Rob Bonta about the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. When the author entered a 14-word statement opposing the merger, the site produced an email in her name urging Bonta to drop his opposition. The message also invented a first-person account of struggling to find steady work, although she had supplied no such story. The letters were processed through Influent, an AI vendor founded by NSC co-founder Tanner Kelly, who described the system as AI-assisted and declined to identify the campaign’s funders. NSC’s website lists no founders, board, or funders, and Paramount has not commented; Warner Bros. Discovery denied funding the texts. The article argues that the system’s design, which solicits hardship narratives and appears to predetermine the conclusion, serves the campaign’s client rather than the sender. It compares the effort with the 2017 net-neutrality comment campaign, which used fake submissions, while this campaign recruits real people and invents their reasoning. The messages appeared amid pressure to settle the merger challenge, including Paramount’s proposed $1.88 billion bond request and an alleged ultimatum to move the studio out of California. The author contrasts the generated message with an independently signed letter opposing the merger and warns that the deal’s potential control of CBS News, CNN, and archival footage raises broader concerns about editorial control and democratic memory.