Marking its first news deal in years, Meta Platforms entered into an agreement with Reuters to use its content to answer user questions posed to its Meta AI chatbot. The arrangement comes as Meta has been minimizing news content on its services in response to publisher demands for revenue sharing and regulatory criticism over misinformation. Terms of the partnership were not disclosed, nor were details provided as to whether Meta plans to use Reuters content for model training. Meta AI is available across its Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger services.

“Going forward, content from publishers could become more important to Meta’s AI training efforts,” SiliconANGLE writes, explaining that in 2024 “rival artificial intelligence providers have inked content licensing deals with dozens of newspapers,” and “at least some of those agreements, such as OpenAI’s April deal with the Financial Times, permit the use of articles for AI training.”

A brief news article in Reuters says only that the new partnership allows Meta AI to “respond to news-related questions with summaries and links to Reuters content.”

The Verge describes the deal as “the first of its kind for Meta, in an era of news outlets agreeing to provide their content to AI companies” in an article that goes on to call the social media giant “adversarial” in its stance against news organizations.

“Though Meta now appears to be willing to pay for news content, it’s also simultaneously fighting laws that would require compensating news publishers for their content on social media,” The Verge writes, adding that “if you live in Canada, for example, you can’t access news on Facebook and Instagram because rather than pony up according to a new law, Meta opted to block all publisher accounts and links on the platforms.”

Both Meta and Google blocked news links in California, which was considering a “link law” that would tax online tech firms for content. In August, Google agreed to $250 million in funding to digitally provide local news summaries as part of its search returns in California. Some stakeholders oppose the controversial settlement. Though principally about search, there is AI overlap as Google is using Gemini AI to answer search queries, and some of the funds would be used for an AI news program.

Poynter writes that “there is a growing understanding that the collapse of local news is a threat to communities, not just an ‘industry.’”

Nationally — and internationally in the case of Reuters and the Associated Press, which last summer entered a news-sharing pact with OpenAI — news outlets appear interested in leveraging AI. This past year, outlets including The Atlantic, Vox, The Wall Street Journal and Dotdash Meredith have also signed deals with OpenAI.