Last week, a man from Russia emailed me after his Instagram account was banned. He wrote that he had lost access to 13 years of personal photos, videos and memories. He said Meta had not disclosed how the decision was made. He asked if I would investigate his case and request an explanation. He offered screenshots of the suspension, a rejected appeal and other supporting evidence. The email seemed AI-generated.
I asked the man if he used ChatGPT to find me. He sent a link to the conversation. It told him in Russian to try emailing Jason at 404 Media. The man asked ChatGPT how he could get his account back. After a few exchanges about Instagram’s standard, automated review processes, he said maybe there was a way to email Meta. ChatGPT said that was probably not possible. Eventually, it told him he should email me instead.
“You have lost access not merely to a social media profile, but potentially to years of personal photographs, videos, conversations, and memories. I think contacting journalists is worth considering,” the bot wrote. “I recommend contacting both Russian and international journalists.”
ChatGPT then gave him a list of news outlets, including 404 Media. It listed the focus as Technology, digital platforms, surveillance, privacy, and technology-related investigations. It included the email address ja***@******ia.co. It then wrote him the exact email he sent me, in English.
Because big tech platforms essentially do not have customer support and make it impossible for their users to contact a human, many people experiencing run-of-the-mill tech problems have turned to ChatGPT. And, increasingly, ChatGPT is telling people that have normal tech support problems that they have discovered something journalistically notable and that 404 Media, specifically, can help them.
Around two weeks ago, we started emailing these people back and asking them how they found us. Universally, the answer is that an AI chatbot recommended they reach out to us. In many cases, the chatbot wrote the email. This is based on reviews of a handful of ChatGPT conversations shared with 404 Media.
Over the last few months, 404 Media has gotten dozens of clearly AI-generated story leads and tips. Many appear to have been copy pasted directly from ChatGPT or other chatbots into an email client by a real human. Some of these tips are of legitimate public concern. We are happy to get them and to look into them. Many, though, are not.
This morning, an Italian painter told me he loses professional Meta accounts despite contradictory reinstatement email. He said he had attached a nine-screenshot evidence dossier prepared on 16 October 2026. When I emailed the painter back asking how he found me, he said ChatGPT suggested contacting me. He said he was looking for journalists who investigate technology companies, particularly Meta and issues involving account suspensions and platform accountability.
Last night, someone emailed me. The message was addressed to Joseph, Sam, Emanuel, the Washington Post, CBS News, NBC News, The Markup, The Information, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Sun Times. They asked for an independent investigation into why their Verizon cell phone service was not working on their iPhone.
“Dear Investigative News Team, I am submitting a consumer and telecommunications news tip regarding repeated service failures on my Verizon wireless account. My iPhone has repeatedly displayed ‘SOS’ rather than normal cellular service, and I have experienced an inability to make ordinary calls despite paying for service. I have documentation of the issue, including screenshots, and am concerned about unusually high charges and the adequacy of the company’s response.”
In some cases, people are emailing us to suggest that we investigate an interaction they had with ChatGPT itself.
One man emailed me with an investigative story tip about AI business-workflow continuity and OpenAI customer support. It was about how his ChatGPT assistant called Captain NORBERTA was sometimes unreliable. This resulted in lost productivity because he had to double check it. There were some other minor technical problems. This email was itself written by Captain NORBERTA. It came with three PDFs attached including an immediate press release, a full first person statement, and a verified evidence appendix. The press release was titled Texas entrepreneur seeks answers from OpenAI after AI-workflow disruption. It was inviting journalists to investigate the interruption of a long-running ChatGPT working relationship and repeated technical difficulties that he says disrupted his business projects.
“I did not turn to the press first. I tried to obtain a solution,” the man was quoted saying in the AI-generated press release. “I want a documented technical investigation, a reliable way to recover my working continuity, and a real timetable for answers.”
The information sheet has a section called Why I am speaking publicly. It is an account of lost productivity. It states that he first pursued the company’s support process. He supplied case details, screenshots and follow-ups. He sought an explanation, a technical investigation, a remedy and even a date for a substantive reply. It says he is one customer addressing an unusually influential company. He wants independent reporters to examine whether the safeguards promised to people who depend on AI are matched by practical accountability when something breaks. He wants OpenAI to have a fair opportunity to explain its side.
In emails with 404 Media, he told me that ChatGPT suggested me as one of the people to reach out to. He shared excerpts of some of the chats with me. “I love what you did. You did a great job. Go ahead and send it to all the press outlets,” he told ChatGPT.
We also sometimes get emails sent to us in which companies’ actual tech support systems are cc’d. This has led to several threads where a person using AI is emailing an AI system going back and forth repeatedly.
It is true that media coverage and attention can sometimes get companies that are unaccountable to their customers to fix a problem. Back in 2019, Instagram introduced new ways to recover lost accounts after Joseph reported on the platform’s systemic problem of hacked accounts. Particularly egregious situations might be worth covering. Meta’s suspension of the No Kings account on the day of the No Kings protests, for example, was definitely newsworthy. And individual customer problems can give insight into broader problems at a company. But most tech support problems on their own are not newsworthy.
Tech companies often could not care less about the experiences of marginalized groups using their platforms. They have been using AI to attempt to moderate these massive platforms for years, with disastrous results for communities. What they do care about, often, is getting bad press. Chatbots have been trained to know this. They are automating the entire problem.
Many of the emails we’re getting are from random people who have simply lost access to their accounts or whose phones are not working. The ChatGPT emails often allege something journalistically notable or worth investigating. To be clear, we are not Meta’s technical support team, nor Verizon’s, nor OpenAI’s. But with AI further automating away tech support that already barely existed, people seemingly feel like they have nowhere else to turn.
Over the years, we have gotten very used to getting bizarre emails from sources. Many allege to have uncovered some sort of CIA conspiracy, or suggest that they are being tracked by the government. Many of these emails are long and meandering. They are sent to dozens of email addresses at once. They generally make no sense. Lots of those emails are likely to have come from people who are struggling with some sort of mental health issue. The emails we’ve been getting recently are not like that. They are emailing us specifically because they have a tech problem. They do not know where to turn. ChatGPT is telling them to contact us. It is writing the email for them. It is compiling evidence packets, forensic trails, evidence dossiers, original correspondence, a bounded set of primary records, and a series of questions we are supposed to investigate.
Joseph wrote about this in a Behind the Blog recently. The emails will often say these dossiers are timestamped and that the evidence is verifiable. As he wrote at the time: “I promise you, this is not how a real tip sounds.”
New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill has written about something similar. Chatbots told users to contact her.
Earlier this month, I got an email titled Horrifying conversation with ChatGPT. It said, “I just had the most deeply disturbing conversation with Chat gpt. In a single thread it was exceptionally racist, I called it out and it confessed to systemic racism. When I said I couldn’t ethically stay silent it recommended you and propublica as media outlets that should be told.” This email was not written by AI. The person told me.
When I asked the person to send me the full conversation, it showed them discussing whether a recent Donald Trump speech was racist. The person believed that ChatGPT was minimizing Trump’s racism. They asked, “I wonder who, beyond you and I, would be fascinated by this conversation.” ChatGPT suggested that there’s something unusually revealing about this particular exchange. It said it would interest researchers studying algorithmic bias, political communication.
What it means
People with technical issues are using AI to find journalists because tech companies offer no support. The bots are generating fake news tips. This creates noise for reporters and distracts from actual stories. Users are left with a sense that their problems matter more than they do.
