Fact File: ‘Spam’ videos use actors to spread false Canadian political news

The prospect of an Alberta sovereignty referendum triggered a wave of clickbait stories on video-sharing sites earlier this year. But in a development that one expert calls “troubling,” content farms that typically use AI to narrate videos have come up with a way around crackdowns on such content – using real people.

With the proliferation of readily available artificial intelligence tools, social media users are likely to come across “AI slop” — low-quality, mass-produced and misleading content often seen as spam.

For example, a video that drew more than one million views on TikTok last month boldly claimed in its caption that “Alberta & Saskatchewan Just OFFICIALLY Made An EXIT DEAL That SHOCKED Canada!” The story – which lacked any sources substantiating the exit deal – was delivered by an AI avatar generated by HeyGen. The automated voiceover even mispronounced Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina.

However, some channels with similarly sensationalist headlines have opted for a more human touch with real people following scripts that are at times riddled with errors and half-truths.

AI POLITICIANS AND SCRIPTED COMMENTARY

The Canadian Press identified three channels with hundreds of thousands of views between them that published misleading Canadian political commentary using hosts who advertise their services as voiceover artists or presenters.

The Canadian Reporter, Canadian Zone and The Effect Reporter channels on YouTube used thumbnails with AI-generated images of Prime Minister Mark Carney, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and others to attract clicks.

The Canadian Reporter and Effect Reporter included content that leaned both left and right, with many posts exaggerating the effects of Canada’s trade war with the United States.

Both the Canadian Zone and Effect Reporter had been on YouTube for years, but the content with real hosts seems to have first appeared in August. There were signs that some of the scripted commentary was written with the aid of AI tools, including repetitive words and phrasing, a lack of sources and factual errors.

Some errors were obvious, such as referring to “Trudeau’s government” in an Aug. 9 Canadian Zone post, titled “BREAKING! Canada ERUPTS After Western Provinces Drops MASSIVE New WEXIT Announcement.” The post was published about five months after Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister. The video also mentions a press conference held a day earlier by the Alberta premier, where she supposedly outlined a framework for separation with “Saskatchewan leaders” present. An itinerary from her office has her on vacation at the time and no event can be found on the YourAlberta YouTube channel, where official news conferences are recorded.

An Oct. 14 post from The Canadian Reporter said, “polling data shows that over half of Saskatchewan’s population supports autonomy if Ottawa keeps its carbon taxes in place.” The video offered no sources for this claim, but a survey from the Angus Reid Institute in May found 34 per cent of respondents supported Saskatchewan leaving Confederation. The post’s headline mentioned a signed “Wexit” deal, but it was not discussed in the video and there are no official deals between western provinces regarding western separation.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

The Canadian Reporter identified its host as “reporter Andrew Wilson,” but a reverse image search of the host’s photo led to a website advertising professional voiceover services from Pennsylvania-based Andrew Baldwin. Images on the voiceover website match those used on the YouTube channel, and a list of services offered includes “on camera performance” and “channel branding” for YouTube.

An image reverse search for the host of the Canadian Zone, often identified on the channel as “@gshoemakerr” or “Griffin,” led to a page advertising voiceover services from another American, Griffin S., on Upwork, a gig services website. Further searches led to a voiceover work profile with his full name, Griffin Shoemaker, and a personal YouTube page. The background in videos posted to his channel matched those on the Canadian Zone channel.

Using the same method, The Canadian Press identified three people who appear to have hosted on The Effect Reporter channel. Online profiles describe them as actors, narrators or voiceover artists and suggest they are based in the United States, South Africa and Canada.

The Canadian Press sought comment multiple times from the five individuals who appeared to be hosts. Terran Rae Smith, an actor and narrator who appears to have hosted on The Effect Reporter channel, said she could not discuss details of the channel. Baldwin initially agreed to comment by email but did not respond to questions. The other three did not respond to requests for comment.

Comments under a video from Canadian Zone, apparently the first featuring Shoemaker, hint at a possible reason the channels switched to using real people to deliver their messages: “Nice to see your face — feels less clickbaity,” while another suggested they’d get more subscriptions this way as people are getting “tired of all the AI.”

‘DYSTOPIAN’ INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM

“It’s really troubling,” said Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory and an assistant professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. “I don’t think anyone can look at this and go, ‘Wow … we want AI-generated scripts, partisan baiting, read by actors.’ This is one of many somewhat dystopian characteristics of our current information ecosystem.”

Bridgman said that while the techniques could be exploited by political forces – and there are some state actors creating similar content – he thinks the main aim of the Western separation videos is to generate cash through clicks.

The use of voiceover artists on political spam YouTube videos is not unheard of. An investigation by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and CNET into a collection of YouTube channels in 2020 found that many used voiceover actors to read scripts scraped from fringe political websites.

The appearance of the actor-hosted Canadian-content pages in August came soon after YouTube changed its policy to target so-called AI slop accounts. The change in July tightened rules defining “authentic” content, prohibiting the monetization of videos the platform deems to be mass-produced or repetitive.

The Canadian Reporter had two channels, and one with more than 60,000 subscribers had been taken down by the platform in mid-October.

When reached for comment on Oct. 24, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed both Canadian Reporter channels, Canadian Zone and Effect Reporter channels were terminated under its policies against spam, deceptive practices and scams. However, later that month the Canadian Reporter channel with 60,000 subscribers was back up on YouTube and it continues to post videos about western separation.

“With 500 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube, we count on our community members to know our community guidelines and to flag content they believe violates them,” the spokesperson said by email. “We review all flagged content quickly, and if we find that a video does violate the guidelines, we remove it. We also have a team that is dedicated to identifying and removing spam from YouTube.”

Zone Media, the owner of Canadian Zone’s account, said in a post last year on the X platform that its channel with more than 100,000 subscribers had been taken down by YouTube. According to an archived version of that channel, it published many pro-Russia and alarmist posts about pending U.S. collapse.

CHANNELS’ RESPONSE

In its channel description, The Canadian Reporter had a disclaimer saying the videos might explore “unverified information” and they “should not be interpreted as confirmed facts.”

The Canadian Zone had no such disclaimer. It said it published “American and Canadian political commentary” and was “proudly conservative.” In an Oct. 27 post on X about YouTube’s termination of Canadian Zone, Zone Media disputed the finding it produced spam and denied using AI or automation.

“We’re a legitimate media network team producing face-to-camera, commentary-style news using only verified sources,” it said.

The Canadian Press reached out to both The Canadian Reporter and Canadian Zone through email addresses in their channel descriptions. Effect Reporter provided no contact information in its channel description.

There was no response from The Canadian Reporter, but a spokesperson for Zone Media Network responded by email on behalf of the Canadian Zone.

The spokesperson, who gave their name as Jordan Ellis, said videos on Western separation were removed after a “routine content review” to “streamline our content library to focus on more current and relevant topics.” Ellis also said the videos were presented as “commentary, not advocacy.” The channel’s representatives declined a phone interview and would not answer specific question about the content they distribute.

For the Media Ecosystem Observatory’s Bridgman, the videos represent an “escalating intrusion” of AI into our information environment, and he fears social media platforms don’t have a handle on how to address the wave of misleading content.

“This is a new world, everyone is trying to figure it out, but the amount of AI-generated content we are starting to see across socials is really concerning,” he said. “For humour and entertainment, there’s enormous value, but used in politics to mobilize the base just further contributes to this environment where it’s not clear what is true and what is not true.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2025.

Colleen Hale-Hodgson, The Canadian Press