Meta Platforms to use Reuters news content in AI chatbot

(Reuters) - Meta Platforms said on Friday its artificial intelligence chatbot will use Reuters content to answer user questions in real time about news and current events, the latest AI tie-up between a big technology company and a news publisher.

Neither Meta nor Reuters-parent Thomson Reuters disclosed the financial details of the partnership. The arrangement would be its first news deal in years. It comes at a time when the Facebook parent has been reducing news content on its services after criticism from regulators and publishers over misinformation and disagreement about revenue-sharing.

Meta AI, the company's chatbot, is available across its services including Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. The social media giant did not disclose whether it plans to use Reuters content to train its large-language model.

"We can confirm that Reuters has partnered with tech providers to license our trusted, fact-based news content to power their AI platforms. The terms of these deals remain confidential," a spokesperson for Reuters, said in a statement.

Reuters will be compensated for access to its journalism under a multi-year deal, according to a report on Friday from Axios, which first published the news.

Through its partnership with Reuters, "Meta AI can respond to news-related questions with summaries and links to Reuters content," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement sent by email.

Other companies including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Jeff Bezos-backed startup Perplexity have struck similar AI partnerships with news organizations.

Reuters already has a fact-checking partnership with Meta, which began in 2020.  

(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; editing by Ken Li and Anna Driver)