A chatbot powered by verified news from a news agency? Unlike Meta, which abandoned its “fact checking” program in the United States, Mistral, the French artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, has reached an agreement with Agence France Presse (AFP), according to an AFP press release on Thursday, January 16. Thousands of articles in six languages will feed its AI chatbot, “Le Chat”, a competitor to ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Gemini (Google), Anthropic and xAI (led by Elon Musk) in the coming weeks, after a test phase.
The announcement was presented by Mistral as “a European bulwark against attacks by its Silicon Valley rivals against fact-checking”, reports the Financial Times, this Thursday. Until now, conversational agents have drawn on content available on the Web to answer users' questions. From now on, Mistral's chatbot will be based on information verified by AFP, contained in its 2,300 daily dispatches, as well as its archives.
AFP dispatches will not be used to train Mistral’s models
A position that is the polar opposite of those of Meta and X, both of whom have chosen to entrust the moderation of their social networks (namely X, Instagram, Facebook and Threads) to their users rather than to “fact checkers” in the name of “freedom of expression”.
“This type of agreement, in the current context, shows that a "The AI player has bet on independent, fact-based professional journalism," says Fabrice Fries, director of AFP, in the columns of the British economic newspaper. For Arthur Mensch, head of Mistral, the French start-up offers a "more open" partnership model, which allows for a fairer sharing of value than that adopted by its American competitors. "Relying on a world-renowned news agency like AFP will allow the Chat to provide reliable and factual answers, up to date, and verified by information professionals," continues the manager, quoted in the AFP press release.
Until now, AI companies have been accused by the press and creators of picking from their content without authorization and without paying usage fees, leading to several copyright disputes.
While the details of the contract are not known, AFP dispatches will not be used to train Mistral's language models, underlines the Financial Times. The day before, Google announced a similar agreement with another news agency, Associated Press, to feed its Gemini AI. OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, has other deals with media outlets including Le Monde, News Corp, German group Axel Springer (publisher of Bild) and the Financial Times. Last June, Mistral raised €600 million, reaching an estimated valuation of €6 billion.
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