Creating a 24-hour television news channel used to require studios, cameras, producers, anchors, editors and a large newsroom.
Mirage wanted to see how much of that could be replaced by AI.
The startup behind the AI video-editing app Captions spent roughly $50,000 on a daylong experiment called the Mirage News Network. Four AI-generated anchors delivered licensed Reuters stories, while AI also generated graphics, commercials and interview segments.
The broadcast reached 50,000 viewers on X, while its livestream post generated 824,000 impressions.
That sounds impressive. But it does not necessarily mean people want AI news.
The $50,000 Newsroom
Mirage CEO Gaurav Misra built and managed the project himself, using around $30,000 worth of Claude Code alongside Mirage's own Avatar X technology and other AI tools.
The company was deliberately transparent about the experiment. A graphic identified the AI-generated elements throughout the broadcast, and Mirage acknowledged errors after they occurred.
There were plenty.
At one point, the system incorrectly identified a woman appearing in a Reuters package as President Donald Trump.
That matters because news is not simply a video-generation problem.
The company had no journalists working on the project, and Misra acknowledged that the instructions given to the AI were based on general journalistic standards rather than established newsroom practices or a formal journalistic code.
Dan Axelrod, who chairs the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee, called it a "news delivery project" rather than a news organization.
The Audience Question
Mirage believes AI-generated newscasts could eventually become inevitable. Misra argues that different audiences may want different ways of consuming information.
The available evidence is less encouraging.
A May 2026 Gallup survey found that only 7% of Americans relied on AI to get news to any significant degree. Nearly 40% said they believed a news organization's use of AI would reduce their trust in its information.
That creates an unusual problem for AI media companies.
AI can make producing content dramatically cheaper. It does not automatically create demand for that content.
Making a news anchor is becoming easy. Making people trust one is not.
What This Means For Miami
Miami has one of the country's most active intersections between technology, media, entertainment and creator culture. That makes the city a natural market for experiments in AI-generated video and automated content.
For Miami startups, the Mirage experiment also illustrates where the opportunity may actually be.
The value may not be in replacing journalists with avatars. It could be in giving journalists, publishers and media companies tools that let small teams produce more video, explain complex stories and reach audiences across more formats.
Miami's large creator economy and growing AI sector give companies plenty of potential distribution channels. But the Mirage experiment suggests that automation alone is unlikely to be the product.
The harder product is credibility.
Reporting Source: This article builds upon reporting from Variety and adds analysis of what the development means for Miami and South Florida.
