The idea
The Plausible Post looks and behaves like an ordinary online newspaper: a front page, sections, bylines, timestamps, photos with captions, a new story every hour. The difference is that none of it is real. The stories are invented by a language model and the pictures are rendered by an image model — and unless you scroll down to the small print in the footer, there is nothing to tell you so.
That is the point. The site is a small, hands-on demonstration of how convincing synthetic news has become. If you found yourself reading a story here as if it were real, you have experienced first-hand why "it looks like proper journalism" is no longer a useful test of truth.
How the stories are made
Every hour an automated process runs the following steps:
1. Inspiration. It collects current real-world headlines and trending topics from public sources (Wikipedia's most-read pages and news feeds from around the world). These are used only as loose inspiration — for themes, settings, sectors and moods — never as facts.
2. Writing. A language model is asked to write a plausible but entirely fictional article in the style of an international newspaper, set in a randomly chosen country or region, with concrete details, quotes and consequences. It is explicitly instructed to invent new events rather than retell real ones.
3. Names. Real people, companies and brands never appear under their real names. Famous names are replaced with variants that may sound vaguely familiar; everyone else gets a randomly generated name. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental.
4. Photographs. An image model produces "press photographs" from a written brief. No camera was involved; the people in them do not exist.
5. Publication. The result is published automatically, with a fictional byline. Editors can retract stories, and retracted stories are marked as such rather than quietly deleted.
How to spot it — here and elsewhere
Some habits that help with synthetic news in general, not just on this site:
Look for the source, not the style. Professional layout, confident tone and quoted "experts" are all trivially easy to generate. Ask who published this and whether anyone else independently reports it.
Search the specifics. Real events leave traces: other outlets, official statements, court records, company announcements. If a search for the named people, organisations and places turns up nothing outside the article itself, be suspicious.
Study the photos. Generated images are improving fast, but text on signs, hands, reflections, crowds and background details still often go wrong. Reverse image search rarely finds a synthetic photo anywhere else.
Notice the emotional pull. Stories engineered to make you angry, afraid or triumphant spread fastest. That is true of synthetic stories and of real-but-misleading ones alike.
Read the small print. Legitimate satire and experiments like this one disclose what they are — somewhere. Disinformation does not.
What this site is not
It is not an attempt to deceive anyone for gain, to influence opinion on real events or to harm real people. Stories are never about real, identifiable persons, and articles that turn out to resemble real events too closely are retracted. Search engines are given the same disclosure that readers get.
Disclaimer
All articles and images on this site are generated by artificial intelligence. Persons, organisations, quotes and events are fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.
The articles on this website are generated automatically by artificial intelligence for the purpose of media-literacy education. They are works of fiction. No statement on this site about any person, organisation, product or event should be taken as fact. The site, its operators and its contributors accept no liability for any use of the content as if it were factual reporting. Names of real public figures are never used; names that appear are invented or randomly generated, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Images are synthetic and do not depict real people, places or events.
If you believe an article should be removed — for example because it resembles a real person or event too closely — please contact [email protected] and it will be reviewed promptly.
Contact
Questions, feedback or requests: [email protected].