Meta Collaborates With Reuters To Provide News Content On AI Chatbots

Meta Platforms, announced a partnership with Reuters (photo: x @cheinyeanlim)

JAKARTA Meta Platforms, parent company from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has just announced a partnership with Reuters to leverage reliable news content from the British news agency in their artificial intelligence chatbot, Meta AI. This collaboration allows Meta AI to provide news-based real-time answers and current events to users across Meta platforms.

With this partnership, Meta AI can respond to user questions related to news by providing a brief summary and direct link to Reuters content. The move marks Meta's first news partnership in recent years, and is taking place amid the company's efforts to reduce news content on its platform after criticism from regulators and publishers over the spread of misinformation and disapproval related to news revenue sharing.

Although this announcement drew great attention, neither Meta nor Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters, disclosed financial details of the agreement. In a statement to the media, Reuters representatives confirmed that the company had teamed up with a number of technology companies to license their factual and trusted news content. However, the detailed provisions of each deal remain confidential.

"We can confirm that Reuters has been working with technology providers to license our trusted news content to be used on their AI platforms. This provision of cooperation remains confidential," a Reuters spokesperson said in a statement.

This collaboration lasted over a multi-year period and ensured that Reuters would receive compensation for its journalistic access. A report from Axios, who first reported the news, said the agreement would give Meta AI direct access to news from Reuters in response to users' need for accurate and verified information.

In addition, this Meta-Reuters collaboration also expands the relationship that has existed between the two. Since 2020, Reuters has been a fact-checking partner for Meta, which aims to reduce the spread of misinformation on various Meta platforms, especially on social media Facebook.

Meta's partnership with Reuters is also not the only one in a collaborative trend between big tech companies and news organizations. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' startup, have also established a similar partnership to enrich their platform with trusted news sources.

With this partnership, Meta hopes that Reuters news content will strengthen the quality of Meta AI interactions with users, provide up-to-date information, and reduce the risk of inaccurate information dissemination on its platform.