(TNS) — Google the CU Independent, the student news outlet that covers the University of Colorado Boulder, and the first result — cuindependent.com — is a copycat website churning out what appears to be AI slop with headlines like “Why does my itchy scalp itch a day after washing?”

The second result — cuindependent.org — is the legitimate news site run by dozens of CU Boulder student journalists who take photographs and write articles about local sports, student government, arts and culture, and campus goings-on.

Their website warns that the news organization is “not affiliated with cuindependent.com,” the web address the CU Independent had used since 2009.

The imposter site is confusing readers with articles that appear to be generated by artificial intelligence and is siphoning pageviews from real student reporting, the CUI’s journalists say. They’ve spent hundreds of dollars of their own money to try to fix the problem, enlisted lawyers and even tried to get the Colorado Bureau of Investigation involved.

Students built an entirely new website — the version now found at cuindependent.org — over the summer in hopes of disentangling themselves from the old one.

“In my time as editor-in-chief, I would love to spend more time working on our reporting than trying to fix this website that’s impersonating us,” said Greta Kerkhoff, who is serving as the CUI’s editor-in-chief this academic year.

The CUI has no official connection to the university’s journalism program, but department chair Patrick Ferrucci said the faculty wishes the student publication’s editorial staff success as it works to resolve this “unfortunate situation.”

“Online AI-generated content can be inauthentic and misleading and should not be confused with high-quality community journalism, professional ethics and editorial standards, and the skills of dedicated student journalists honing their craft at CU Boulder and at other colleges and universities,” Ferrucci said in a statement.

When a reporter from The Denver Post messaged the imposter site asking who was behind it, the emailed response ignored the question entirely, instead offering prices from $149 to $299 that could be paid for articles with “quick link integration into content that’s already resonating with our audience.”

‘IT FEELS INCREDIBLY MALICIOUS’

Nobody knows who is running the knock-off site, which claims to be an evolution of CU Boulder’s student-run campus news outlet with roots dating back to 1978. The site purports to still be the CUI, but “a little bit different.”

“Our team believes in the freedom to speak, feel and explore who we are,” the imposter website says on its “about” page. “We still honor what CU Independent stood for: strong voices, independent thought and stories that matter. You’ll see new faces and new sections, but the heart stays the same.”

The website lists seemingly fictitious writers and advisers alongside what appear to be AI-generated photos and author biographies. Some of those bios claim the site’s journalists — who are supposed to be college students gaining experience — are “seasoned reporters” with more than a dozen years of experience in the journalism industry. A Google search of those reporters’ names did not turn up results elsewhere.

In at least one case, the image of a real journalist is used. The imposter CUI website features a bio of a writer named “Avery Quinn” that includes a photo of real-life Czech journalist Pavla Holcová, an image taken from the documentary “The Killing of a Journalist.”

As the site located at their longtime web address keeps posting new AI-generated articles that have nothing to do with CU, the student journalists say they are at their wits’ end. Above all, they worry about their journalistic reputation being tarnished.

“It is clearly being done by someone who knows every legal loophole,” said Jessica Sachs, the CUI’s editor-in-chief during the 2024-2025 academic year and a current CU Boulder journalism student. “It feels incredibly malicious.”

How did a rogue website become the bane of these students’ existence?

The answer isn’t entirely clear, but years of unorganized cybersecurity management likely contributed to the situation, Sachs said.

‘KIND OF A SECURITY NIGHTMARE’

Since the CUI website’s inception — the publication, then still named the Campus Press, became online-only in 2006 — a revolving door of college students had access to the various passwords and permissions for the publication’s WordPress content-management system without much organization or documentation.

“It was kind of a security nightmare,” Sachs said. “I made it my mission to fix everything as much as I could.”

Last year, during Sachs’ tenure as editor-in-chief, she said the cuindependent.com domain registration was about to expire, but nobody knew who the original account-holder was or had the password needed to renew the account. Sachs said she went back five or six generations of editors-in-chief, but could not find the keeper of the domain.

For years, she said, the entire website went down — sometimes for just 24 to 48 hours — whenever the registration lapsed, only to come back online after the unknown account holder paid the bill.

“That was way too stressful,” Sachs said.

To avoid that drama, Sachs enlisted the help of a computer science freshman who spent last summer building a replica of the CUI website, along with its archives, at the cuindependent.org address.

The students thought they had solved their problems. The new website was up and running. The old site vanished for about nine months.

But when Kerkhoff took over as CUI editor-in-chief this academic year, the old .com address came roaring back. Someone had apparently bought up the expired web address. (The current site, like many webpages, is registered anonymously through GoDaddy.)

The old domain featured what appeared to be AI-generated content on a website posting as the student news outlet. Articles on the impersonator site range from “How many albums does Drake have?” to “Why does my hair hurt when I move it another direction?” to “Is Freddie Highmore actually autistic?”

The fake site initially used the real CUI’s trademarked logo and linked to the news organization’s social media pages, but whoever was behind it eventually made their own logo and created fake CUI Instagram and Facebook pages, rendering Kerkhoff’s attempt to report trademark abuse moot.

“Whoever is doing this seems to have a good understanding of media law because they narrowly scrape by with what they can get away with,” Kerkhoff said.

Kerkhoff said she spent her own money hiring a domain broker to try to buy back the .com site to no avail. Out of options, she contacted the Student Press Law Center, which connected her with a lawyer.

PROTECTING STUDENTS’ INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Attorney Alexandra Bass, who is representing the student newsroom, said copycat websites are becoming increasingly common and the rise of AI further contributes to “the chaos.”

“This can be particularly harmful to student newsrooms whose staff often changes from year to year,” Bass said in a statement. “… Student newsrooms should consider designating a person responsible for domain maintenance and implementing a documented process to manage their domains amid transitions.”

Copycat news sites use AI to mass-produce content quickly, generating revenue from ads and affiliate links, Bass said. It’s not easy to prove the imposter site is generating money, which is why Kerkhoff said the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s business fraud unit couldn’t take on the case.

Bass advised the student journalists to document instances of public confusion and file a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy complaint to have the copycat site taken down and, ideally, get the domain transferred back to them.

The CUI is in the process of filing such a complaint, the student editors said, and they’ve reported the fraudulent website to nearly every entity they can imagine.

The fight, though, has even impacted the CUI’s new .org site. The student reporters’ new site has experienced intermittent problems with security pop-ups and blocked access for some visitors. When Kerkhoff brought the issue to WordPress, she said employees with the content management system told her the CUI’s site was secure.

She believes the repeated reports made by CUI staff against the imposter website are being misattributed to the .org address, triggering those error messages.

Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center, said the CU Boulder students’ case and others involving AI are difficult to pursue because it’s hard to find an actual human or legal entity against whom to lodge grievances like copyright infringement.

“That’s increasingly difficult when the lines are blurred as to who is actually running or managing some of these websites,” Gaston-Falk said. “We’re very proud of these student journalists who are stepping up not only to report it but to protect their intellectual property. This student leader (Kerkhoff ) has been absolutely dogged in trying to protect her and her newsroom’s rights here, so we’re very happy about that.”

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