\u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0Cody,\u201d Ottewill said.<\/p>\n
Ottweill texted Roark, who reports on the Broncos for local news outlet\u00a0Mile High Sports<\/a>, to ask if he was OK. Roark had just steamed some milk. He was very much alive. And he was befuddled. Within that post was a photo of him holding a child, smiling, like a flashback in an episode of \u201cDateline.\u201d<\/p>\n Roark does not have a child.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just one of those things you hate seeing,\u201d Roark said a week later, sitting in the lobby of the Broncos\u2019 practice facility. \u201cJust doesn\u2019t make sense. I always thought, like \u2014 usually you see that happen to, like, high-profile celebrities.<\/p>\n \u201cFor that to happen to me was just really weird,\u201d he mused. \u201cVery, very weird.\u201d<\/p>\n In the moments and days to come, Roark concluded that this was an AI-generated post because no such image exists of him smiling while holding a child. He\u2019s still befuddled. He is a well-known figure in the Broncos\u2019 fanbase, a former football coach and PE teacher who\u2019s made a career in the Denver media market and has over 21,000 followers on X<\/a>. But he would never view himself as an \u201cimportant enough figure\u201d for such a creation, as Roark put it.<\/p>\n Suddenly, he became a virtual pawn in the scheme of something much greater. Since its creation in November, the account \u201cWild Horse Warriors\u201d posted mostly fake Broncos content four times a day. It claimed that Courtland Sutton refused to wear an LGBTQ+-supporting armband during a game<\/a> (this didn\u2019t happen). And that Sean Payton had his sixth child on Christmas (he has two)<\/a>. Many came laced with clearly fake images.<\/p>\n It\u2019s harmless \u2014 until it isn\u2019t. That post of Roark drew over 120 reactions<\/a>. Many posts draw many more.<\/p>\n \u201cWild Horse Warriors\u201d is now dead. After The Denver Post reached out to Meta for comment, it removed the Facebook page and \u201cother connected pages,\u201d the company said, for violating policies around inauthentic behavior<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cInauthentic Behavior refers to a variety of complex forms of deception, performed by a network of inauthentic assets controlled by the same individual or individuals, with the goal of deceiving Meta or our community or to evade enforcement under the Community Standards,\u201d Meta\u2019s policy reads, as a spokesperson provided.<\/p>\n That network, however, still lives.\u00a0\u201cWild Horse Warriors\u201d followed a string of similar accounts that followed other accounts that post fake shock-value Broncos content, each gaining thousands of followers and generating thousands of engagements. Those still exist<\/a>. And there\u2019s a greater chain of similar accounts targeted toward other fanbases: there\u2019s the \u201cMidway Bears,\u201d and \u201cHere We Go Steelers,\u201d<\/a> and \u201cChiefs Kingdom Forever.\u201d<\/a> The pathways splinter and seep into every corner of the NFL landscape, and beyond.<\/p>\n Several experts in the field of AI and social-media disinformation noted to The Post that artificial intelligence, in a vacuum, is not the problem. The problem, they said, is how easy AI can be utilized to set up widespread networks of misinformation \u2014 trickling all the way down to a Broncos reporter who is decidedly not dead.<\/p>\n And Roark identified the danger himself, in his own attempts to rationalize why machine learning would single out him, of all people.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it creates only clicks, but it also creates this disconnect where people that don\u2019t know, that may not be on other social medias \u2026 a lot of older people are there on Facebook,\u201d Roark said. \u201cThey believe it.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it spreads like wildfire.\u201d<\/p>\n Bo Nix donating $5 million to a dog rescue<\/a>. Nameless cheerleaders dying. The team hiring homeless workers. John Elway facing unexpected health complications.<\/p>\n All such Broncos content has flooded Facebook feeds. All of it\u2019s fake, from an ever-growing branch of accounts that use the same verbiage and link to barely comprehensible mock news stories. Much of it explodes, though; one false post of Nix refusing to wear a rainbow armband has over 2,300 reactions<\/a>. One account, \u201cBlue & Orange Pride,\u201d posted in late December that Broncos Hall of Fame linebacker Randy Gradishar died, spawning a wave of hundreds of heartfelt comments and reactions.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen the fake posts, reported them to the Broncos Alumni rep,\u201d Gradishar \u2014 who is very much alive \u2014 texted The Denver Post Friday. \u201cThat\u2019s all I have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n This fall, as longtime Broncos radio play-by-play man Dave Logan was scrolling his Facebook reels, he came across a post that former Denver MVP running back Terrell Davis was battling throat cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWait a minute,\u201d Logan thought to himself. \u201cI know Terrell. This can\u2019t be true.\u201d<\/p>\n And then he thought again.<\/p>\n \u201cWait a minute. Is this actually true?\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t, of course. Logan confirmed as much with a couple of Davis\u2019 friends.<\/p>\n Months later, The Post showed Logan a post from \u201cWild Horse Warriors\u201d that claimed the longtime announcer \u2014 labeled in the text as the \u201cvoice of the Patriots\u201d \u2014 was facing a serious vocal-cord illness.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I\u2019m not,\u201d Logan said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m also not the voice of the New England Patriots.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just can\u2019t figure out,\u201d Logan added, \u201cwhat purpose would posting these type-things \u2026 what purpose would they serve? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n The main purpose? Money. This is a type of fraud, experts told The Post. Virtually every fake post includes a link \u2014 Roark\u2019s heads to abcnews.besttopixs.com \u2014 that includes several ad pop-ups. Every impression on such websites can generate a shred of revenue. Maybe such posts don\u2019t need to hit a million clicks, said Brian Keegan, a professor at CU who researches the dynamics of large-scale online communication. But a thousand clicks on a variety of posts spread across a web of accounts, Keegan said, can make for a profitable operation.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the potential that such accounts are directly malicious. V.S. Subrahmanian, a professor at Northwestern and an international expert on AI\u2019s intersection with security issues, noted that visiting such links could automatically download cookies that can access one\u2019s banking or personal information.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a bridge toward being vulnerable in more important spaces,\u201d said University of Denver professor Peter Organisciak<\/a>, who researches AI applications to large text analysis. \u201cSo, if I can be tricked in Nuggets content \u2014 then, not having the savvy to identify that I\u2019m being tricked could make me more vulnerable for things like financial crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, fake Nuggets content exists, too. One account titled \u201cDenver Nuggets True Fans\u201d posted clearly fake images of the notoriously private Nikola Jokic holding a child in an elf onesie at Christmas. It has over 4,400 reactions<\/a>.<\/p>\n The actual person or people behind such accounts: unknown. Many have linked phone numbers that, when rang, automatically play a message that the call can\u2019t be completed. According to Facebook\u2019s page transparency settings, the manager of the \u201cWild Horse Warriors\u201d account that posted Roark\u2019s supposed death was located in Vietnam. Several other similar accounts also have managers located in Vietnam.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got all these accounts that a lay-user might assume are independent accounts, but are really all controlled by the same click-farm,\u201d Keegan said. \u201cAnd so they\u2019re all boosting and amplifying each other\u2019s content. And so, the algorithms on Facebook tend to reward or \u2014 accelerate this kind of amplification.\u201d<\/p>\n There are various ways AI is likely involved here. As experts said, users controlling such accounts may be writing pieces of code to generate stories around Broncos topics through large-language models like ChatGPT. That, then, could be fed into a separate piece of code that tells an account when to post content, Subrahmanian said.<\/p>\n The expansion and general normalcy of deepfake technology have \u201cenormous\u201d implications, Subrahmanian said. Genuine national security concerns, for one.<\/p>\n Those implications start here, with faceless accounts claiming the erosion of Logan\u2019s vocal cords.<\/p>\n \u201cI think part of the takeaway is like \u2014 \u2018Hey, you\u2019re not safe from this, even when you\u2019re just reading about football,’\u201d said Casey Fiesler, a professor at CU Boulder who researches technology ethics.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Misinformation, and just general AI slop, is everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n The effect of trickery<\/p>\n Joe Carol\u2019s freshman year at Grand Junction High was rough. Many freshman years were. A student committed suicide in the school parking lot in the winter of 2016<\/a>, and many of Carol\u2019s friends transferred out the following year. He was struggling. So Roark, a football coach there, pulled Carol aside.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018Look, I understand, sometimes life can move really fast, and you can get caught up with what\u2019s going on,’\u201d Carol recalled. \u201c\u2018But just take a second, and listen to the wind blow, and hear the birds chirp. And just remember when life gets moving fast, to just try and slow yourself down.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always stuck with me.\u201d<\/p>\n Years later, Carol was sitting in his kitchen in Colorado when he came across an Instagram story that reported his old coach was dead. Carol paused. Considered.<\/p>\n It got him, at first.<\/p>\n \u201cI was actually really sad,\u201d Carol said of his initial reaction. \u201cLike, sadder than I would\u2019ve thought I\u2019d have been, honestly. And just \u2014 how awful that is.\u201d<\/p>\n So why Roark? Misinformation is far from a new concept, and the general public has evolved in its critical literacy, Keegan said. But misinformation has evolved right back. Users on Facebook might be more guarded against outlandish content about, say, Peyton Manning. Less guarded against something that feels more personal.<\/p>\n \u201cTen years into this kind of pattern, maybe we\u2019re a little bit more critical about the big stories,\u201d Keegan said. \u201cBut like, the \u2014 \u2018Oh my gosh, a journalist?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At a micro level, it\u2019s \u201cincredibly frustrating\u201d to have to ask social-media users to do increasing amounts of work to sift through fake content, Fiesler said. At a public-policy level, AI is also incredibly difficult to regulate. In early December, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that called for working with Congress<\/a> on a \u201cminimally burdensome national standard\u201d for AI regulations, and denounced legislation passed in Colorado that aims\u00a0to protect consumers from algorithmic discrimination<\/a>.<\/p>\n Multiple experts pointed out that platforms like Facebook wouldn\u2019t be motivated to heavily regulate AI-generated fake content if it generates interaction<\/a>. In November, Reuters reported that Meta projected it would earn about 10% of its 2024 revenue from scam ads<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this misalignment of incentives in terms of, like, is Facebook doing what\u2019s best for its users, or is Facebook doing what\u2019s best in terms of getting people to click on ads or sort of \u2014 outrage, and things like that?\u201d Keegan said.<\/p>\n Roark\u2019s mostly shrugged this all off, a couple of weeks later. The post labeled him as 40, not 31; AI could\u2019ve at least gotten his age right, he thinks.<\/p>\n \u201cThey must think I look old,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n And yet he hasn\u2019t shaken the thought that this is a strange world he lives in now.<\/p>\n![\"Mile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TDP-L-CodyRoarkIsAlive-010926-TH-001.jpg\")
Mile High Sports reporter Cody Roark talks with 9News sports reporter Mike Klis after watching a portion of a Broncos team practice on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, at Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit in Centennial, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst\/The Denver Post)<\/p>\n![\"Examples](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TDP-Z-AI-sports-slop-02.jpg\")
Examples of AI slop stories that have appeared recently on Facebook. (Screenshots via Facebook)<\/p>\n![\"Mile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TDP-L-CodyRoarkIsAlive-010926-TH-002.jpg\")
Mile High Sports reporter Cody Roark, right, watches a Broncos team practice on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, at Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit in Centennial, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst\/The Denver Post)
\nInside a potential click-farm network<\/p>\n![\"Mile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TDP-L-CodyRoarkIsAlive-010926-TH-006.jpg\")
Mile High Sports reporter Cody Roark sits for a photo on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, at Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit in Centennial, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst\/The Denver Post)<\/p>\n