We are the CU Independent, the University of Colorado Boulder's independent and fully student-run news source! The CUI has been a vital part of career development for budding journalists at CU Boulder and a key source of breaking news, campus happenings and in-depth investigations for the CU and Boulder communities.

Recently, our publication has been targeted by a look-alike webpage, seemingly run by artificial intelligence. This AI news source is operating using our name and portions of our backstory. They've also opened social media accounts in our name.

This is highly dangerous. Independent media is more important than ever, and our community deserves to know that they can trust local journalism, without confusion regarding who is who or whether AI was used in the making of their news.

For months now, our staff has worked diligently to resolve this problem ourselves. We've become amateur web developers to build a new, more secure official webpage. We've sent impassioned letters and enlisted the help of pro-bono lawyers. Our editorial board has spent hundreds of our own dollars without reimbursement to try to fix this.

But nothing has worked. We're asking for your support in fundraising so we can continue fighting against this attack on our name, brand and hard-earned credibility. We're continuing to seek legal action against those impersonating us, specifically by filing a UDRP complaint, but we need your financial support to do so.

Our staff is unpaid, with our entire editorial board working outside jobs in addition to 20+ hours each week on the CUI, all while seeking our degrees. We can no longer afford to fight this battle alone. All donations would go towards the UDRP complaint or other costly measures that our lawyers recommend we take to get the false site taken down.

Thank you so much for all of your support!

Signed,

Jessica Sachs (Editor-in-chief, 2024-2025) and Greta Kerkhoff (Editor-in-chief, 2025-2026)