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Newsbreak, a popular free news app in the United States, has been publishing fictional articles written by AI since 2021. ReutersThis app publishes licensed content from legal news sources such as: CNN, AP and Reuters In addition to the news itself, NewsBreak also uses artificial intelligence tools to rewrite press releases and local news stories. One of the most egregious examples of fake news stories by NewsBreak was published last Christmas Eve. The app’s story claimed that there had been a shooting in Bridgeton, New Jersey, when in fact no such incident had occurred.
New Jersey State Police denied the allegations in the article, but removed the app four days later, claiming it got its information from another website. In January, February and March, food banks in Colorado Reuters The airline said it was forced to turn away passengers because News Break had incorrectly reported the time of the food distribution, and that it had complained about News Break’s inaccurate reporting but had not received a response from the airline.
Another charity in Pennsylvania said Newsbreak had twice published articles claiming to run a 24-hour foot care clinic for homeless people when in fact they did not. The app has since removed all false stories about the charity. Reuters The company added a warning to its homepage in March saying its content was “not necessarily error-free.” In addition to publishing false stories, Newsbreak has been accused of copying articles from websites without permission and has previously settled copyright infringement lawsuits with at least two publications. Reuters NewsBreak has been described as the “most downloaded news app in the United States.” If you haven’t heard of this app before, it’s probably because its users are primarily women over 45 years old, without a college degree, and living in suburban or rural areas of the U.S. The app is known for posting links on social networks like Facebook that prompt users to download the app when they click on the link.
News Break, which is only available in the U.S., was launched in the U.S. as a subsidiary of Yidian Corp., a Chinese company partly owned by a Chinese state-run media company. Yidian is no longer associated with the app, but one of its main investors was Beijing-based IDG Capital, which is the publisher of News Break in the U.S. The Pentagon says there’s a connection (PDF) With the Chinese military.
The former employee Reuters While Newsbreak markets itself as a U.S.-based company with U.S. investors, most of the work on its algorithms is done by China-based engineers. Newsbreak CEO Jeff Chen said: Reuters The company complies with US data and privacy laws and is managed on Amazon’s servers in the US. Zheng said Chinese staff only have access to the anonymous data stored on those servers. Despite its ties to China, Reuters We found no evidence that News Break published articles that portrayed the Chinese government in a favorable light.