Meta is set to bring back news content to its platforms through a multi-year partnership with Reuters that will allow its AI chatbot, Meta AI, to cite and link to Reuters reporting when answering news-related questions.
Starting today, you'll see Reuters-sourced responses when asking Meta AI about current events across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The deal marks Meta's first major news partnership since ending its previous arrangements with publishers like The Wall Street Journal for its now-discontinued Facebook News tab.
While Meta has recently distanced itself from news content on its social platforms, the Reuters partnership suggests that completely avoiding news isn't feasible as AI becomes more central to its products. Meta's AI will now respond to news queries with summaries and direct links to Reuters coverage, ensuring you get information from an established source known for non-partisan reporting.
The agreement comes as AI companies face mounting pressure to combat misinformation and less than two weeks before the 2024 US presidential elections. Other tech giants have already moved in this direction – OpenAI has agreements with numerous news organizations, while Microsoft recently committed to paying news companies for content used in its Copilot AI assistant.
Neither company has disclosed the financial terms of the deal, nor whether Reuters' content will be used to train Meta's large language model, Llama. Reuters has been a fact-checking partner with Meta since 2020, making this an expansion of their existing relationship.
This partnership signals a careful return to news content for Meta, but through AI rather than traditional social media feeds – a strategy that could help the company balance user demand for current events while maintaining its recent stance of reducing political content across its platforms.