Facebook has taken over the British start-up Bloomsbury AI. The company develops artificial intelligence, which Facebook would like to use against fake news.
Bloomsbury AI joins the London branch of the American company, reports Facebook head artificial intelligence Yann LeCun Tuesday on Facebook.
Although Facebook does not want to use the expertise of Bloomsbury AI to counter fake news, according to TechCrunch this is the intention of the takeover. Co-founder Sebastian Riedel of Bloomsbury AI has previously started a company that traces fake news, that’s what says Down Town News.
According to Facebook, the acquisition should provide a better understanding of so-called natural language. For artificial intelligence, it is often difficult to interpret what people have written down in natural terms. That also complicates the detection of fake news.
Facebook has lately received a lot of criticism about the spread of fake news via social media. Critics fear that fake news has had the influence on various elections, among other things.
Facebook has been actively fighting fake news since March 2017. For example, the company does this with reports on messages. These reports were reduced earlier this year because it appeared that striking labels were counterproductive.
Facebook uses a combination of human moderators and artificial intelligence to search for fake news and fake accounts, among other things. Recently it appeared that the company had removed 583 million fake accounts in the first quarter of this year.
With the acquisition of Bloomsbury AI, according to TechCrunch, an amount of between 23 and 30 million dollars is involved.