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Meta Teams Up With Reuters For Real-Time News In AI Chatbot
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Justyn Newman Former Lead Cybersecurity Editor
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- Users will access Reuters content on multiple platforms.
- Reuters will be compensated for its journalism.
- Meta’s spokesperson highlighted improvements in user experience.
Reports indicate that Meta has formed a multi-year partnership with Reuters to integrate its news content into Meta’s AI chatbot. This deal, first reported by Axios , will help the chatbot provide real-time answers to questions about news and current events.
Starting Friday, users of Meta’s AI chatbot in the U.S. will have access to live news and information from Reuters when they ask about current events, notes Axious.
Axios notes that reuters will be compensated for access to its journalism, but it is unclear whether the deal includes a licensing component that would allow Meta to use Reuters’ content to train its large language model, Llama.
The AI chatbot will be available on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, allowing users to get news updates. When users ask about news, the chatbot will reference Reuters’ articles and provide links to their coverage, said Anxios.
A Meta spokesperson told Axios, “We’re always iterating and working to improve our products, and through Meta’s partnership with Reuters, Meta AI can respond to news-related questions with summaries and links to Reuters content.”
“While most people use Meta AI for creative tasks, deep dives on new topics or how-to assistance, this partnership will help ensure a more useful experience for those seeking information on current events.”
Reuters has not provided any comment on the partnership, according to reports from both The Verge and Axios.
Similarly, OpenAI announced in May a multi-year partnership with News Corp to access content from major publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.
These partnership comes amid rising tensions in the media landscape, as seen with The New York Times demanding that Perplexity, an AI search engine startup, stop using its content without permission .
As AI technologies continue to generate summaries and insights, publishers are increasingly worried about protecting their content and revenue, fearing that unauthorized use could undermine their business models.
The rapid integration of AI in journalism represents both a significant opportunity and a profound challenge. On one hand, partnerships like those between Meta and Reuters or OpenAI and News Corp highlight a growing recognition of the need for AI to source credible content, which can enhance the quality of information provided to users.
However, the increasing prevalence of AI-generated summaries raises critical concerns for traditional publishers. As AI tools become more capable of producing content, there is a risk that users may rely on these summaries instead of engaging with original articles, potentially leading to decreased traffic and revenue for news organizations.
Ultimately, the relationship between AI and journalism is evolving.
image from Freepik
MIT Teaches Kids How To Build AI Models
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Justyn Newman Former Lead Cybersecurity Editor
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- Little Language Models helps kids learn AI by building small-scale models themselves.
- Program uses dice to teach probabilistic thinking, a core concept in AI.
- Demonstrates AI bias by simulating diverse datasets and adjusting probabilities.
In a press release published today, MIT unveiled a new educational tool developed by MIT researchers Manuj and Shruti Dhariwal.
Their application, Little Language Models, invites children to explore how AI works by allowing them to create simplified, small-scale models. This hands-on approach provides an alternative to the often abstract or lecture-based introductions to AI, making concepts accessible through interactive learning.
The program starts by using a pair of dice to introduce probabilistic thinking—one of the foundational concepts behind language models (LLMs). In AI, probabilistic thinking enables a model to predict the most likely next word in a sentence, accounting for uncertainty and making decisions based on likelihoods, notes MIT Review.
By adjusting dice to visualize this process, students can grasp that a model’s output isn’t always flawless but is based on probabilities. With Little Language Models, children can modify each side of the dice to represent different variables and adjust the probability of each side appearing, mimicking the decision-making process behind AI models.
By doing so, students can see how varying conditions lead to different outputs, helping to clarify that AI models, like their dice experiment, rely on probabilistic reasoning rather than deterministic rules.
Beyond illustrating AI fundamentals, the program also addresses bias in machine learning. Educators can use the tool to explain how bias can emerge in AI by having students assign colors to each side of the dice to represent different skin tones.
Initially, students might set the probability of a white hand at 100%—a scenario meant to reflect an imbalanced dataset containing only images of white hands. In response, the AI model generates only white hands when prompted.
Afterward, students can adjust the probabilities to include a more diverse range of skin tones, simulating a balanced dataset. This helps demonstrate how data diversity influences AI outputs and how biases can be mitigated through better data representation.
This feature is particularly timely as AI ethics and transparency become key issues in technology education. By introducing children to these concepts early on, the Dhariwals hope to foster a generation of tech-savvy individuals who understand AI’s strengths and limitations.
Emma Callow, a learning experience designer who collaborates with schools on integrating new technology into curricula, praised the program’s approach. “There is a real lack of playful resources and tools that teach children about data literacy and about AI concepts creatively,” Callow explained.
“Schools are more worried about safety rather than the potential to use AI. But it is progressing in schools, and people are starting to kind of use it. There is a space for education to change,” she added.
Little Language Models will launch on the Dhariwals’ online education platform, coco.build , in mid-November. The program will also be piloted in various schools over the next month, providing educators with early feedback and refinement opportunities, as noted by MIT Review.
