NewsBreak Under Scrutiny for Spreading Misinformation via AI-Generated Content

NewsBreak, one of the most downloaded news apps in the U.S. with over 50 million monthly users, is facing scrutiny following a Reuters report that reveals the company’s involvement in spreading misinformation through artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content. The report also draws attention to NewsBreak's ties to China, noting that its technology is maintained in Beijing and that it receives funding from a Chinese company allegedly linked to the country’s military.

The Reuters investigation uncovered multiple instances of NewsBreak using AI to fabricate news stories. For example, on Christmas Eve last year, the app published a sensational article titled "Christmas Day tragedy strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey, amid rising gun violence in small towns." The story, which reported a fictitious shooting, was quickly debunked by the Bridgeton police department, which labeled the article as "entirely false" in a Facebook statement on December 27.

While NewsBreak primarily distributes licensed content from reputable outlets like Reuters, Fox, CNN, and AP, it also generates some of its articles using AI tools, which can lead to significant errors. The Reuters investigation found at least 40 instances since 2021 where AI-generated content on NewsBreak had adverse effects on communities. These included erroneous stories, fictitious bylines, and plagiarized content from competitors. Two local community programs assisting disadvantaged people were directly impacted by these inaccuracies.

For instance, Food to Power, a Colorado-based food bank, had to turn people away due to incorrect distribution times published by NewsBreak in January, February, and March of this year. Despite complaining to NewsBreak on Jan. 30, the charity received no response. Similarly, Harvest912, a charity in Erie, Pennsylvania, reported being affected by inaccurate information from the app.

NewsBreak promotes itself as a U.S.-based and U.S.-invested startup. However, it was founded in 2015 by Jeff Zheng, who also founded the Chinese news aggregation app Yidian. NewsBreak and Yidian share a U.S. patent for an "Interest Engine" algorithm designed to recommend news based on a user's interests and location. Until 2019, NewsBreak was a subsidiary of Yidian, which referred to NewsBreak as its U.S. version until 2021. Moreover, one of NewsBreak’s primary backers is IDG Capital, a Beijing-based firm listed by the Pentagon among companies allegedly working with the Chinese military.

Despite these ties, there is no evidence that NewsBreak has censored content or produced news favorable to the Chinese government. However, the revelations have raised concerns about the app's reliability and the influence of AI in news dissemination.

A company memo from May 2022, written by a NewsBreak consultant to CEO Jeff Zheng and reviewed by Reuters, expressed concerns over NewsBreak's use of AI tools to republish stories from local news sites under five fictitious bylines. "I cannot think of a faster way to destroy the NewsBreak brand," stated Norm Pearlstine, former Executive Editor at the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, who was a consultant for NewsBreak at the time. In an interview, after NewsBreak allowed him to speak with Reuters, Pearlstine mentioned he discovered the practice from a colleague at NewsBreak.

"I question the legality of creating fake accounts using content publishers put behind their paywalls. If I had learned about the practice while at the LA Times, I would have instructed our lawyer to seek a restraining order and sue for damages,” Pearlstine wrote.

Pearlstine’s six-month consulting role at NewsBreak in 2022 involved advising the company on U.S. editorial operations. Confirming the authenticity of the memo, Pearlstine attributed the issue to a lack of journalistic experience among the staff. "A fair number of people on the staff were either new to journalism or new to the U.S. market. That was part of the reason I felt I had to be very direct and very explicit in explaining why I thought this was important," he told Reuters.

NewsBreak responded that the news stories mentioned in Pearlstine's memo were part of a "limited experiment in three U.S. counties" aimed at aggregating third-party content, which was discontinued after producing ten articles. The company denied accessing paywalls, stating it used publicly visible "snippets" of articles to create complete news stories using OpenAI.