Wyoming
Wyoming reporter caught using artificial intelligence to create fake quotes and stories
HELENA, Mont. — A quote from Wyoming’s governor and a local prosecutor were the first things that seemed slightly off to Powell Tribune reporter CJ Baker. Then, it was some of the phrases in the stories that struck him as nearly robotic.
The dead giveaway, though, that a reporter from a competing news outlet was using generative artificial intelligence to help write his stories came in a June 26 article about the comedian Larry the Cable Guy being chosen as the grand marshal of the Cody Stampede Parade.
“The 2024 Cody Stampede Parade promises to be an unforgettable celebration of American independence, led by one of comedy’s most beloved figures,” the Cody Enterprise reported. “This structure ensures that the most critical information is presented first, making it easier for readers to grasp the main points quickly.”
After doing some digging, Baker, who has been a reporter for more than 15 years, met with Aaron Pelczar, a 40-year-old who was new to journalism and who Baker says admitted that he had used AI in his stories before he resigned from the Enterprise.
The publisher and editor at the Enterprise, which was co-founded in 1899 by Buffalo Bill Cody, have since apologized and vowed to take steps to ensure it never happens again. In an editorial published Monday, Enterprise Editor Chris Bacon said he “failed to catch” the AI copy and false quotes.
“It matters not that the false quotes were the apparent error of a hurried rookie reporter that trusted AI. It was my job,” Bacon wrote. He apologized that “AI was allowed to put words that were never spoken into stories.”
Journalists have derailed their careers by making up quotes or facts in stories long before AI came about. But this latest scandal illustrates the potential pitfalls and dangers that AI poses to many industries, including journalism, as chatbots can spit out spurious if somewhat plausible articles with only a few prompts.
AI has found a role in journalism, including in the automation of certain tasks. Some newsrooms, including The Associated Press, use AI to free up reporters for more impactful work, but most AP staff are not allowed to use generative AI to create publishable content.
The AP has been using technology to assist in articles about financial earnings reports since 2014, and more recently for some sports stories. It is also experimenting with an AI tool to translate some stories from English to Spanish. At the end of each such story is a note that explains technology’s role in its production.
Being upfront about how and when AI is used has proven important. Sports Illustrated was criticized last year for publishing AI-generated online product reviews that were presented as having been written by reporters who didn’t actually exist. After the story broke, SI said it was firing the company that produced the articles for its website, but the incident damaged the once-powerful publication’s reputation.
In his Powell Tribune story breaking the news about Pelczar’s use of AI in articles, Baker wrote that he had an uncomfortable but cordial meeting with Pelczar and Bacon. During the meeting, Pelczar said, “Obviously I’ve never intentionally tried to misquote anybody” and promised to “correct them and issue apologies and say they are misstatements,” Baker wrote, noting that Pelczar insisted his mistakes shouldn’t reflect on his Cody Enterprise editors.
After the meeting, the Enterprise launched a full review of all of the stories Pelczar had written for the paper in the two months he had worked there. They have discovered seven stories that included AI-generated quotes from six people, Bacon said Tuesday. He is still reviewing other stories.
“They’re very believable quotes,” Bacon said, noting that the people he spoke to during his review of Pelczar’s articles said the quotes sounded like something they’d say, but that they never actually talked to Pelczar.
Baker reported that seven people told him that they had been quoted in stories written by Pelczar, but had not spoken to him.
Pelczar did not respond to an AP phone message left at a number listed as his asking to discuss what happened. Bacon said Pelczar declined to discuss the matter with another Wyoming newspaper that had reached out.
Baker, who regularly reads the Enterprise because it’s a competitor, told the AP that a combination of phrases and quotes in Pelczar’s stories aroused his suspicions.
Pelczar’s story about a shooting in Yellowstone National Park included the sentence: “This incident serves as a stark reminder of the unpredictable nature of human behavior, even in the most serene settings.”
Baker said the line sounded like the summaries of his stories that a certain chatbot seems to generate, in that it tacks on some kind of a “life lesson” at the end.
Another story — about a poaching sentencing — included quotes from a wildlife official and a prosecutor that sounded like they came from a news release, Baker said. However, there wasn’t a news release and the agencies involved didn’t know where the quotes had come from, he said.
Two of the questioned stories included fake quotes from Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon that his staff only learned about when Baker called them.
“In one case, (Pelczar) wrote a story about a new OSHA rule that included a quote from the Governor that was entirely fabricated,” Michael Pearlman, a spokesperson for the governor, said in an email. “In a second case, he appeared to fabricate a portion of a quote, and then combined it with a portion of a quote that was included in a news release announcing the new director of our Wyoming Game and Fish Department.”
The most obvious AI-generated copy appeared in the story about Larry the Cable Guy that ended with the explanation of the inverted pyramid, the basic approach to writing a breaking news story.
It’s not difficult to create AI stories. Users could put a criminal affidavit into an AI program and ask it to write an article about the case including quotes from local officials, said Alex Mahadevan, director of a digital media literacy project at the Poynter Institute, the preeminent journalism think tank.
“These generative AI chatbots are programmed to give you an answer, no matter whether that answer is complete garbage or not,” Mahadevan said.
Megan Barton, the Cody Enterprise’s publisher, wrote an editorial calling AI “the new, advanced form of plagiarism and in the field of media and writing, plagiarism is something every media outlet has had to correct at some point or another. It’s the ugly part of the job. But, a company willing to right (or quite literally write) these wrongs is a reputable one.”
Barton wrote that the newspaper has learned its lesson, has a system in place to recognize AI-generated stories and will “have longer conversations about how AI-generated stories are not acceptable.”
The Enterprise didn’t have an AI policy, in part because it seemed obvious that journalists shouldn’t use it to write stories, Bacon said. Poynter has a template from which news outlets can build their own AI policy.
Bacon plans to have one in place by the end of the week.
“This will be a pre-employment topic of discussion,” he said.
If the Wyoming House and Senate approve its budget changes, then the chambers’ Joint Conference Committee will have helped the University of Wyoming dodge a $40 million cut, while also limiting the Wyoming Business Council to one year’s funding instead of the standard two.
The Joint Conference Committee adopted numerous changes to the state’s two-year budget draft, but didn’t formally advance the document to the House and Senate chambers. The committee meets again Monday and may do so at that time.
Then, the House and Senate can vote on whether to adopt that draft by a simple majority.
First, UW
Starting in January, the Joint Appropriations Committee majority had sought to deny around $20 million in exception requests the University of Wyoming made, while imposing a $40 million cut to the university’s block grant.
That’s about 10% of the state’s grant to UW but a lesser proportion of the school’s overall operating budget.
The Senate sought to restore the $60 million.
The House sought to keep the denials and cuts, ultimately settling on a bargain to cut $20 million, and hinge UW’s retention of the remaining $20 million on its finding and reporting $5 million in savings.
The Joint Conference Committee the House and Senate sent into a Friday meeting to negotiate those two stances chose to fund UW “fully,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily in the state Capitol after the meeting.
But, $10 million of UW’s $40 million block grant won’t reach it until the school charts a “road map” of how it could save $5 million, and reports that to the Joint Appropriations Committee, she added.
“A healthy exercise, I think, for them to participate in, while the Legislature still allows them to receive full grant funding,” Nethercott said.
“I’m hopeful people feel confident the University is fully funded,” she continued, as it’s “on the brink of receiving a new president, having the resources he or she may need to continue to steer the leadership of the University, our state’s flagship school into the future.”
Hours earlier in a press conference, House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said the Legislature has been clear that UW should avoid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI programming, and that it’s the position of the House majority that the school should tailor its programming to Wyoming’s true business needs – so UW graduates will stay in the state.
Within an earlier draft of the budget sat a footnote blocking money for Wyoming Public Media — a publicly funded media and radio entity funded through UW’s budget.
That footnote is gone from the JCC’s draft, said Nethercott.
Wyoming Business Council
The Wyoming Business Council is set to receive roughly $14 million, confined to one year, for its internal operations, said Nethercott.
“Both chambers have decided to only fund the operations,” Nethercott said, “not all the grant programs.”
She said that’s to compel the Legislature to revisit the concerns it has with the agency, then return in the 2027 legislative session with a vision for its future.
The Business Ready Communities program is “eliminated,” she said.
JCC member Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, elaborated further.
Of the appropriation, $12 million is from the state’s checking account, plus the state is authorizing WBC to use $157,787 in federal funds and nearly $1 million from other sources.
“We’re going to take it up as an interim topic in appropriations (committee) and how to rebuild it and make it work the way we think it should work,” said Pendergraft. But the JCC opted to fund the Small Business Development Center for two years, along with Economic Diversification Division for Manufacturing Works, and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center, Pendergraft noted, pointing to that language on his draft budget sheet.
Pendergraft made headlines last year by saying he wanted to eliminate the Wyoming Business Council altogether.
But Nethercott told the Senate earlier this month, legislators have complained of that agency her entire nine-year tenure.
She attributed this to what she called communications shortfalls that may not be intentional. She cosponsored a now-stalled bill this year that had sought to adopt a task force to evaluate WBC.
The Wyoming Business Council’s functions range from less controversial, like helping communities build infrastructure, to more controversial, like awarding tax-funded grants to certain businesses on a competitive application process.
Wyoming Public Television
Wyoming Public Television, which is not the same as Wyoming Public Media, is slated to receive the $3 million it lost when Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nethercott said.
It will also receive its usual $3 million from Wyoming.
The entity will not receive another $3 million it had sought to upgrade its emergency-alert towers, said Nethercott, “because we received information from them… they have another source to pay for the replacement and maintenance of the towers.”
Like the Wyoming Business Council, the Wyoming Public TV’s functions range from less controversial to more controversial.
The entity operates, maintains and staffs emergency alert towers throughout Wyoming.
Wyoming Public TV also produces entertainment and informational movies. Its state grants run through the community colleges’ budget.
State Employees
Nethercott noted that the JCC advanced to both chambers an agreement to pay $111 million from the state’s checking account to give state employees raises.
Those raises would bring them to 2024 market values for their work, she noted.
Because that money is coming from the state’s checking account, or “general fund,” and not its severance tax pool as the House had envisioned, then $111 million won’t impact the $105 million investment another still-viable bill seeking to build an “energy dominance fund” envisions.
That bill, sponsored by Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, seeks to lend to large energy-sector projects.
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily in an interview days before the session convened that its purpose is to counteract “green” compacts investors have adopted, and which have bottlenecked energy projects.
Wyoming’s executive branch is currently suing BlackRock and other investors on that same assertion.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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