NewsGuard brings fact-checking chatbot to five European countries

NewsGuard has expanded its news chatbot into France, Italy, Germany, Austria and the U.K. The chatbot offers answers and fact checks based only on sources its journalists have rated as generally reliable.

The service, NewsGuard AI, draws from about 12,000 vetted news and information sources and cites the publishers it uses in each response, Journalism.co.uk reports. European co-marketing partners include French newspaper Ouest-France, Italian outlet Linkiesta and Austria’s 5min.at. NewsGuard also says journalism schools and universities are participating in the European rollout.

NewsGuard positions the chatbot as an alternative to AI systems that can repeat false information. In its own announcement, the company said leading AI models draw broadly from material available online. It argued that limiting NewsGuard AI to vetted sources reduces the risk of spreading misinformation. The chatbot also uses 41 editorial safeguards and NewsGuard’s database of previously debunked claims. ,,,,,

The European launch expands a product NewsGuard introduced earlier this year. NewsGuard says participating publishers receive a share of revenue when their work is cited. Its European co-marketing partners also receive half of the subscription revenue generated from readers they introduce to the service. NewsGuard lists the European subscription price at €8 a month. However, it has not publicly disclosed how much an individual citation pays a publisher.

The source pool comes from NewsGuard’s larger ratings database. Since 2018, its journalists have evaluated more than 36,000 news and information websites using nine journalistic criteria. Those criteria include whether a site regularly publishes false or misleading material, corrects errors and distinguishes news from opinion. NewsGuard says roughly 12,000 sources meet the standard it uses for inclusion in the chatbot.

That group extends beyond traditional newsrooms. NewsGuard says its eligible sources include newspapers, broadcasters and magazines. Furthermore, it includes local startups, independent newsletters, think tanks, hospital systems, research universities and government websites.

The revenue-sharing model also arrives as publishers and AI companies continue to argue over how journalism should be used and paid for. Separately, the European Publishers Council has challenged Google over the use of news content in its AI products. That dispute is not part of NewsGuard’s launch but rather reflects the broader debate over compensation for publisher content.

For NewsGuard, the European rollout puts its model into five new countries and three additional languages. What remains to be seen is how many readers will use it and how much revenue individual publishers will ultimately receive from citations.