Newsbreak bills itself as “the go-to source for all things local” and says it has more than 50 million monthly users.
Carlos Barria
Last Christmas Eve, news flashA free app originating from China and the most downloaded news app in the United States published a shocking article about a small-town shooting. The headline read, “Christmas tragedy strikes Bridgeton, N.J., as gun violence rises in town.”
The problem is, no such shooting happened. Bridgeton, New Jersey Police Department issue a statement On December 27, Facebook refuted the article, which was produced using artificial intelligence technology, calling it “completely false.”
“Nothing similar to this story has ever happened in the area they describe during or around Christmas, or even in recent memory,” the post read. “It appears that this ‘news’ outlet’s artificial intelligence The novel was written and released to readers without any problem.”
NewsBreak, based in Mountain View, Calif., with offices in Beijing and Shanghai, told Reuters it removed the article on Dec. 28, four days after it was published.
The company said “inaccuracies stem from the source of the content” and provided a link websiteadding: “When NewsBreak becomes aware of any inaccurate content or any violation of our community standards, we take immediate action to remove the content.”
The operator of the site findplace.xyz did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. Police declined to provide further comment.
As local news outlets have shuttered across the U.S. in recent years, NewsBreak has filled the void.
Newsbreak bills itself as “the go-to source for all things local” and says it has more than 50 million monthly users. It publishes licensed content from major media outlets, including Reuters, Fox, the Associated Press and CNN, as well as some information obtained by scraping local news or press releases online and rewriting it with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s only available in the United States
But since 2021, the app’s use of artificial intelligence tools has impacted the communities it strives to serve in at least 40 incidents, with Newsbreak publishing false stories; creating 10 stories from local news sites using fictitious bylines; according to A Reuters review of previously unreported court filings related to copyright infringement, cease-and-desist emails and a 2022 company memo documenting concerns about “artificial intelligence-generated stories.”
Reuters interviewed seven former NewsBreak employees, five of whom said much of the engineering work behind the app’s algorithms was conducted in its offices in China. The former employees requested anonymity, citing confidentiality agreements with NewsBreak.
Two local community programs that help vulnerable people told Reuters they had been affected by false stories generated by NewsBreak’s artificial intelligence.
Three “Food Power Generation” events in January, February and March, A food bank in Colorado said people had to be turned away because the food distribution times, as NewsBreak noted, were incorrect. The charity complained to NewsBreak in an email sent to NewsBreak’s general customer support email address on January 30, which was reviewed by Reuters. The charity said it had not yet received any response.
Harvest 912, one Charities in Erie, PA NewsBreak was emailed two inaccurate news reports based on artificial intelligence that it was providing a 24-hour foot care clinic for the homeless, asking the outlet to “cease and desist” from the false reports.
“Publishing this kind of misinformation is doing a disservice – homeless people will walk to these locations to attend a non-existent clinic,” Harvest912 told NewsBreak in a Jan. 12 email seen by Reuters.
In response to questions from Reuters, NewsBreak said it removed all five articles about the charities after learning they were incorrect and based on misinformation on some charity web pages.
Without providing a reason to Reuters, NewsBreak added a disclaimer to its homepage in early March warning that its content “may not always be error-free.”
Newsbreak generates revenue by showing ads to its users, who are primarily female, over 45 years old, without a college degree and live in suburban or rural areas of the United States, according to seven former employees and a 2021 company presentation reviewed by Reuters .
The company was founded in the United States in 2015 As a subsidiary of Yidian, a Chinese news aggregation app. Both companies were founded by Newsbreak CEO Jeff Cheng. Sharing U.S. patents In 2015, the “Interest Engine” algorithm was registered, which recommends news content based on users’ interests and location.
NewsBreak told Reuters that the patents were transferred by Zheng to the two companies because “some of the concepts were developed by Jeff at one point” and because NewsBreak is “based in the United States” and “invested by the United States.” NewsBreak said in a written response to Reuters that sharing the patents would have “absolutely no impact on the company and its operations” and described the technology cited in the patents as “obsolete.”
Reuters reviewed a company memo from a NewsBreak consultant to Zheng in May 2022, which expressed concerns about NewsBreak’s use of artificial intelligence tools to republish reports from local news sites under five fictitious bylines.
“I can’t think of a faster way to destroy the NewsBreak brand,” Norm Pearlstine, the former executive editor of the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times who served as a consultant to NewsBreak at the time, wrote in a memo to Zheng.
In an interview after NewsBreak allowed him to speak to Reuters, Pearlstine said he learned about the practice from a NewsBreak colleague.
“I question the legality of using content publishers to create fake accounts behind their paywalls,” Pearlstine wrote. “Had I learned of this practice while at the Los Angeles Times, I would have directed our attorneys to seek a restraining order and file for damages.” litigation.
Perlstein confirmed the authenticity of the memo and blamed the blunder on a lack of journalistic experience. “There are quite a few people on staff who are either new to journalism or new to the U.S. market. That’s part of the reason why I feel like I have to be very direct and very clear about why I think this is important,” he told Reuters.
NewsBreak said the news stories mentioned in the Pearlstine memo were a “limited experiment in three U.S. counties” to aggregate third-party content, and that the project was disbanded after 10 articles. The company denies using a paywall and says it uses publicly visible “snippets” of articles to generate full news reports using OpenAI.
NewsBreak also pointed out to Reuters that Zheng responded to Pearlstine via email, saying that he was aware of the problem and asked his team to solve it.
OpenAI told Reuters its policy prohibits using its technology to mislead people.
In 2022, Patch Media, which operates digital local news feeds in states across the United States, reached a $1.75 million settlement. litigation According to court documents reviewed by Reuters, NewsBreak accused NewsBreak of copyright infringement, accusing NewsBreak of reprinting Patch’s news reports without permission or attribution of the source.
Patch did not respond to a request for comment. NewsBreak said the settlement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing.
Emmerich Newspapers, which operates newspapers in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, settled with NewsBreak in 2021, accusing NewsBreak of copyright infringement by using Emmerich content without permission. NewsBreak said the settlement was “amicable.”
Another copyright lawsuit is underway. NewsBreak said the parties are “engaged in additional litigation, which we are vigorously defending.”
Wyatt Emmerich, the company’s president, said the lawsuit against NewsBreak involves “verbatim copying of content.” He added: “What worries me in the future is that news aggregators may use artificial intelligence to slightly rewrite our stories, which will make it harder to prove copyright infringement. I have already witnessed this happen on news aggregation sites. occur.
NewsBreak is a private startup whose main backers are San Francisco-based private equity firm Francisco Partners and Beijing-based IDG Capital, NewsBreak told Reuters.
Francisco Partners declined to answer questions about its investment in NewsBreak. IDG did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment.
In February, IDG Capital joined List of dozens of Chinese companies The Pentagon said it was allegedly cooperating with Beijing’s military. IDG Capital told Bloomberg in February It has nothing to do with the Chinese military and does not belong on that list. NewsBreak did not comment on the discovery.
Zheng said Chinese aggregator Yidian was spun off from NewsBreak in 2019 because “the management team at the time did not understand the U.S. market.” Prior to this, Li Ya, president of Phoenix New Media, a Chinese state media Holds 46.9% equity At one point during his tenure, he served as a director of NewsBreak, according to company records.
Yidian News reportedly described NewsBreak as the US version on its website until 2021 wire china.
Yidian in 2017 Well received It has been criticized by ruling Communist Party officials for its effectiveness in spreading government propaganda. Reuters found no evidence that NewsBreak censored or produced news favorable to the Chinese government.
A NewsBreak spokesman said it had no ongoing commercial relationship with Yidian.com. Yidian, Phoenix New Media and Li Ya did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
NewsBreak said about half of its 200 employees work in research and development in China.
A 2022 company roster reviewed by Reuters showed that 100 of NewsBreak’s 137 engineers at the time were in China.
Five former NewsBreak employees said Chief Executive Zheng split his time between China and the United States.
The company said Zheng was born in China and is a permanent resident of the United States, where his family moved early last year.
Reuters found Five recruitment ads NewsBreak posted on a Chinese job site that it was looking for data analysts or engineers for its Beijing and Shanghai offices who could “dig deep” into the app’s “massive user behavior data” of U.S. users.
A Republican aide to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee told Reuters Newsbreak’s use of Chinese engineers could raise concerns that U.S. user data could be accessed in China. The aide declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
In the latest high-profile case, U.S. officials have warned that TikTok, whose parent company is Chinese company ByteDance, could be forced by the Chinese government to use its algorithms to control what news Americans view and hand over their data.
TikTok, the world’s most downloaded short video app with 170 million U.S. users, currently faces a forced sale or U.S. ban.
In response to questions from Reuters, TikTok said it planned to provide third parties with greater access to inspect its code and verify that apps function as expected.
Zheng told Reuters NewsBreak complies with U.S. data and privacy laws and is maintained on Amazon servers in the United States. “Staff in China can only access anonymous data stored on AWS servers in the United States,” he said. Amazon declined to comment.
NewsBreak also said that as a U.S.-based company, it is not subject to Chinese data laws.
Pearlstine, a former NewsBreak adviser, said NewsBreak’s ability to prove itself as an American company was crucial.
“NewsBreak’s long-term health depends on its image as a California company, and the more of its leadership located in Mountain View, the better for the company,” he said.
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