NewsBreak is a local news aggregation platform founded in 2015. It provides a mobile app and website to deliver geographically specific news to users. The app was criticized by

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and

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for containing AI generated and erroneous stories. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, with offices in New York, Beijing and Shanghai. NewsBreak is only available in the United States.

History

NewsBreak (a trade name of Particle Media) was founded by Jeff Zheng. Yi Dian Zi Xun was Particle Media's early investor and divested in 2019. NewsBreak HQ

Harry Shum, former executive vice president of Microsoft’s AI and Research Group, was appointed chairman of the board at NewsBreak in 2020. He previously led Microsoft’s Bing and MSN groups. In 2021,

Francisco Partners Francisco Partners Management, L.P., doing business as Francisco Partners, is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. It was founded in August 1999 and based in ...

invested in NewsBreak during its $115 million Series C funding round and joined the company's board of directors. NewsBreak focuses on local news distribution using machine learning.

Erroneous and AI created articles

Reuters reported that at least 40 AI-generated stories on the app led to inaccuracies affecting local communities between 2021 and 2024. In at least two instances, this led to the dissemination of incorrect information about the services provided by non-profits, including a food bank in Colorado that "had to turn people away because NewsBreak stated incorrect times of food distributions." After Reuters contacted NewsBreak to inquire about the erroneous stories, NewsBreak added a notice to its homepage "warning that its content 'may not always be error-free'." In response to Reuters' reporting,

Raja Krishnamoorthi Subramanian Raja Krishnamoorthi ( ; born July 19, 1973) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2017. The district includes many of Chicago's western and northwestern suburbs, such as Hoffman Estates, ...

of the House Select Committee on China expressed concerns about the app's true purpose and its use of "'opaque algorithms' and artificial intelligence tools to produce news."

found multiple instances of articles by a NewsBreak contributor which described crimes that never occurred, but linked to

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pages for non-existent victims and were able to collect funds for them. A spokesperson for NewsBreak stated they do not verify or edit information in user-generated news articles, instead relying on a content moderation system.

Legal matters

In 2021, NewsBreak settled a lawsuit brought by Emmerich Newspapers for copyright infringement which stated that NewsBreak had republished content without permission. In 2022, NewsBreak settled a lawsuit brought by

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alleging copyright infringement due to unauthorized republication of their content by NewsBreak for $1.75 million without the admission of wrongdoing.

References

{{Reflist News aggregators 2015 establishments in California Internet properties established in 2015 Companies based in California American companies established in 2015 American news websites Companies based in Mountain View, California