Facebook’s Latest AI Acquisition Could Help Tackle Fake News

Social media networks like Facebook have a fake news problem. This is because Facebook allows users to share all kinds of articles, even if they are not necessarily true. Facebook has been taking steps to combat the problem with all kinds of reporting tools, and it seems that their latest acquisition could tackle the problem even more efficiently.

In a report from TechCrunch, it appears that Facebook has acquired an AI company by the name of Bloomsbury whose specialty is in natural language processing. According to Facebook, the acquisition will see the team’s “expertise will strengthen Facebook’s efforts in natural language processing research, and help us further understand natural language and its applications”.

While Facebook does not come outright and say that it will be used to combat fake news, TechCrunch’s report suggests that it will. Plus it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the company’s AI and its tools could be put to use in that field amongst other things. The report also points to how Bloomsbury’s co-founder and Head of Research Sebastian Riedel had also founded a separate startup called Factmata that deals with combating fake news.

Will all this be enough? We suppose we’ll have to wait and see. The financial details of the deal were not mentioned but it has been reported that Facebook might have paid anywhere between $23-$30 million for it.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Facebook