Kalshi Faces Backlash Over AI Video and Casino Ties
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What happened
Kalshi, a U.S. prediction-market company whose sports event contracts account for as much as 70 percent of an estimated $4 billion in revenue in the 12 months ended July according to a source close to the firm, drew online criticism after creator Elliot Choy posted side-by-side stills of a Kalshi ad that closely matched his video of moving into a New York apartment while depicting his face as a white man's; Toronto creator Pushpek Sidhu said in June an ad similarly copied his video after someone identifying as a Kalshi representative had proposed a collaboration. A Kalshi spokesperson said the Choy ad was about four months old and made by an agency the company declined to name, that Kalshi no longer uses AI-generated content depicting people, and that it is reviewing its relationship with the agency. Native American tribes sued Kalshi in California, New Mexico, and Wisconsin arguing the sports contracts are unauthorized gambling under federal Indian gaming laws, and state regulators including New York's have argued Kalshi is running an unlicensed gambling operation; Kalshi says the contracts are financial instruments and denies it is unlicensed gambling. After unsuccessful March 2025 video calls between CEO Tarek Mansour and tribal leaders including Victor Rocha of the Pechanga Band and Jason Giles of the Indian Gaming Association, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this month allowed a California tribal suit to proceed on the ground that Kalshi's sports event contracts constituted class III gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana separately said it was launching a prediction-market app powered by Kalshi.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 2 of 2
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Elliot Choy, Pushpek Sidhu, Victor Rocha and Kalshi spokesperson
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 1 of 2
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: court ruling
- Credits another outlet 0 of 2
- The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
- Unnamed sources 1 of 2
- The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 24, 23:11 UTC by Business Insider, naming its source. First document 11 hours later, from New York Post (court ruling).
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- Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
A reader who saw only one side would not know Kalshi is in two fights at once: an AI-ad copying storm and a tribal-casino legal war that a federal appeals court has now let proceed. Left-leaning coverage in Business Insider centers on creators who say the company cloned their videos and replaced them with white men, and mentions lawsuits only as background that New York regulators call Kalshi an unlicensed gambling operation. Right-leaning coverage in the New York Post never mentions those ads or the race-swap claim, and instead reports failed outreach to tribal leaders plus a Ninth Circuit decision that the sports contracts counted as class III gaming.
Left-leaning coverage leads with the stolen-video accusation. Right-leaning coverage leads with the CEO’s clash with Indian casinos and frames the suits as an "existential threat."
Did Kalshi take the copied ads down, and is it still offering the sports contracts a federal appeals court treated as casino gambling?
Bottom line
Kalshi’s AI-ad mess and its tribal-casino lawsuits are being covered as if they are separate companies: Business Insider never mentions the Ninth Circuit, and the New York Post never mentions the ads.
The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Sports betting accounts for as much as 70% of Kalshi revenue
- Kalshi said it no longer uses AI-generated content that depicts people
- Creator Pushpek Sidhu said a Kalshi ad copied his video's script and gestures and replaced him with a white man
The Left View
Business Insider presents the ads as Kalshi ripping off creators and changing their race, highlighting Choy's comparison stills and Sidhu's statement that he was replaced by a white man and that "They could easily pay me a little bit." It frames the episode as Madison Avenue wrestling with AI's cost-saving benefits against pushback from consumers and creative partners, citing Resemble AI's finding that about 9% of recent Meta ads contain generative AI and CEO Zohaib Ahmed's view that "there's a pretty solid ethical line" when a company is "clearly taking someone else's content and then repurposing it." Mick Feldman of influencer agency The Now called unconsented face-swapping "completely unethical," contrasting it with paying creators to license videos. The article also casts Kalshi as "no stranger to controversy," pointing to the state-regulator lawsuits over unlicensed gambling.
The Right View
The New York Post presents the tribal fight as capable of posing an "existential threat" to Kalshi, reporting that Rocha rejected an advisor invitation as an attempt to make him a token "cigar store Indian," that Giles heard "doublespeak and euphemisms" and concluded "these guys are a huge scam," and that Rocha later wrote "See you in court," urged "curb stomping Kalshi" with "no mercy," and called Mansour a "lying little twerp." It relays Kalshi-aligned views that tribal gaming is "a juggernaut, not an underdog," that tribes have gotten "fat and happy," and that a company source said Kalshi offered an "olive branch" but Rocha "literally blew a gasket." The paper treats the Ninth Circuit's class III finding as setting up a possible Supreme Court showdown, notes Tunica-Biloxi's Kalshi-powered app as a break with the tribal establishment, and reports that investors have kept funding the company, with some citing Trump administration support for prediction markets.
Our Take (balanced)
Left-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that Kalshi appropriated creators' videos without consent or pay and replaced their faces with white men's, supported by Choy's side-by-side stills, Sidhu's parallel claim, and Feldman calling unconsented face-swaps "completely unethical." Right-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that tribal litigation could cripple Kalshi because sports contracts are as much as 70 percent of revenue and the Ninth Circuit has already held they "constituted class III gaming activities under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act." The central unresolved tension is whether Kalshi is a financial-markets innovator under attack from casino incumbents, or a de facto sports book whose vendors also copied creators' work without a license — disputes that have not been joined in the same forum.
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