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By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — AI chatbots are fast becoming a way people find news. But the systems are only as reliable as their sources, and are prone to misinformation and manipulation.
Meanwhile, the rise of AI threatens the business model for news publishers, many of whom say AI model makers are using their work without fair compensation.
NewsGuard, a startup that rates the reliability of news sources, says it sees a way to solve several problems at once.
On Tuesday, it is launching a new product, NewsGuard AI, that accesses and aggregates information only from the sources it has rated as reliable. The chatbot’s responses include citations and prominent links to news outlets.
Perhaps most importantly for publishers, the product promises to share in the wealth. NewsGuard AI bills itself as “the only chatbot that compensates every publisher for their content” through a 50-50 revenue share model.
NewsGuard hopes that revenue will come from users who find the chatbot worth paying $6 per month to access.
Introductory access is free, and NewsGuard is lining up a variety of marketing partners, including magazines and independent bookstores, to help spur usage.
NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill is pitching the product by saying, “Think of how the existing AI chatbots operate, and in every respect, NewsGuard AI does the opposite.”
In a Zoom interview, Brill and the startup’s other co-CEO, Gordon Crovitz, said NewsGuard is applying both its database of vetted news sources and its research into the shortcomings of products like ChatGPT.
NewsGuard has published study after study showing that popular chatbots are prone to sharing false claims and are vulnerable to propaganda campaigns.
“The idea that our leading AI models are so susceptible to foreign disinformation operations is sobering. And they have not taken steps to disinfect themselves,” Crovitz said. “And that was one of the reasons that we saw an opening in the market for a service that has rated the reliability of sources, and of course excludes all of those propaganda and disinformation sources.”
NewsGuard AI bears similarities to specialized AI tools that have gained traction in industries like health care and law. But it is being pitched to the general public, albeit to those who care about accuracy.
In a demonstration ahead of the product’s launch, NewsGuard COO Matt Skibinski showed how the chatbot debunked a piece of medical misinformation and guided the user to primary sources.
The NewsGuard website promotes the new product as “your own personal fact-checker,” noting that it also taps into the startup’s catalog that debunks 64,000-plus false claims.
But convincing users to give it a try may prove difficult in a world already awash with chatbot-type interfaces.
That’s where the marketing partners will come in. They’ll spread the word about NewsGuard AI and receive a cut of the subscriptions they help sell.
Several news publishers are on board for launch, including The Atlantic, one of the most acclaimed magazines in the US.
“Few things will matter more in the near future than the ability of humans to figure out what’s real, what’s false, and what’s confabulated nonsense,” Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, said in a statement.
“This is particularly true when it comes to news,” Thompson said, “and that’s why I love that NewsGuard is launching an AI news product, built on verified sources, clear citations, and a compensation model for publishers. We’re proud to partner on this important issue and approach.”
The compensation model is intriguing because major media companies are taking a two-track approach to AI, filing copyright infringement suits in some cases and striking content licensing deals with AI firms in others.
“The stakes are really, really high here,” The New York Times Co. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said Monday at an event hosted by Axios.
“These companies that make the LLMs have taken our work. They’ve used it without our permission,” Levien said, addressing her company’s lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft and Perplexity.
CNN also recently filed a lawsuit against Perplexity, saying it would prefer “sensible licensing arrangements” rather than legal fights, but arguing that “there is no free option” for AI model operators that are building on the backs of news providers.
Perplexity responded to the lawsuit by saying, “You can’t copyright facts.”
Brill said in the Zoom interview that “we’re trying to line up with publishers instead of lining up in court against publishers.”
NewsGuard informed major news outlets of its approach in advance, he said, and only two sources said they wanted to opt out.
The others, Crovitz said, will be paid “based on how often their journalism is cited.”
Queries often show links to half a dozen news sources. Thousands of other vetted resources, like government websites, are also included in NewsGuard AI’s database.
Brill specified that NewsGuard is not storing or training on publisher content or peering behind paywalls: “We’re simply using what they have made publicly available.”
According to a survey published last week by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, about 10% of consumers use AI chatbots for news on a weekly basis, up from 7% one year earlier.
“AI is not simply another route to headlines,” the researchers concluded. “While some use it to access the latest news, many are using it to interrogate, summarize, and evaluate information, pointing to a more expansive role that combines access with interpretation.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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