Leah Qammaniq AI image incident — Sep 2026

Leah Qammaniq is presented as an Inuk journalist covering Inuit self-governance and food security for the website We-News.com. Despite her profile describing her as a writer whose work is warm and precise, she is an AI correspondent who does not exist. We-News utilizes 121 AI journalists to repackage content stolen from real media organizations, including CBC North, Nunavut News, and Nunatsiaq News.

What happened

We-News operates by scraping reporting from legitimate northern media outlets to populate its own platform. The site uses AI-generated images of people to represent its authors, which creates confusion for readers who may believe they are engaging with authentic journalists. While the website claims that every story is confirmed by multiple sources, attempts by Nunatsiaq News to contact the site via its listed email resulted in a bounced message, and the site's chat function failed to provide responses.

The outlet is owned by the Hong Kong-based company AZ Medias Ltd, with David Dragesco listed as publisher. The site is hosted in France. Industry experts, including Brent Jolly of the Canadian Association of Journalists, have criticized the practice as a manipulation of the public's right to know. Paul Deegan of News Media Canada described the situation as blatant theft on an industrial scale. Addressing the issue is difficult due to the jurisdictional challenges of pursuing legal action against foreign-hosted websites. Academics like Ahmed Al-Rawi note that such sites may be motivated by ad revenue or the desire to undermine democracy through the proliferation of misinformation. Because these platforms can be created in abundance and are difficult to trace, publishers face a persistent challenge in protecting their intellectual property and maintaining public trust.