09/21/2026

NewsGuard Launches NewsGuard AI in Europe, Bringing Reliable AI-Powered News to European Readers in French, German, and Italian, in addition to English

NewsGuard AI draws responses exclusively from 12,000 publishers vetted for reliability by NewsGuard journalists — and compensates all publishers for their cited work.

A coalition of reliable news publishers is forming across Europe to help introduce NewsGuard AI to their readers and present an alternative to big tech’s toxic business model. 

Paris, Rome, Berlin — September 21, 2026 — NewsGuard, the company whose journalists have evaluated the reliability of online news sources since 2018, today announced the launch of NewsGuard AI in France, Italy, Germany, Austria and the U.K., bringing its AI-powered news service to users across Europe. NewsGuard AI is purpose-built to deliver reliable responses to prompts on topics in the news, drawing exclusively from news and information sources vetted for reliability by NewsGuard journalists — and compensated for their content.

While leading AI models regularly generate false claims on controversial news topics, NewsGuard AI offers a new, trustworthy solution: Responses drawn exclusively from 12,000 news and information sources rigorously vetted by NewsGuard’s journalists for reliability. And, unlike other AI systems trained on publisher content without attribution or compensation, NewsGuard AI prominently cites publishers in its responses and will share revenues 50-50 with all news publishers whose journalism is cited.

This gives users of NewsGuard AI quick, convenient access to the best journalism and provides quality journalists with much-needed funding.

NewsGuard AI’s European co-marketing partners include a variety of media across the continent such as French regional daily newspaper Ouest-France, Austrian regional news website 5min.at, and Italian digital news and opinion outlet Linkiesta. All co-marketing partners receive half of the subscription revenues they generate by introducing their readers to NewsGuard AI — in addition to the compensation all publishers in NewsGuard’s catalog of reliable sources receive when their content is used to respond to a user’s query to NewsGuard AI.

With NewsGuard AI, users can:

  •     Get fast, reliable answers based on reporting from journalists around the world, with prominent links to sources.
  •     Get news designed to be even-handed and nuanced.
  •     Dig deeper with follow-up prompts.
  •     Fact check dubious claims.
  •     Send a detailed debunk to a misinformed friend or relative.
  •     Look up the NewsGuard reliability score and ratings for more than 36,000 news sources.
  •     Get a personalized update on news from around the world and from local news sources.
  •     Know that they are using an AI service that compensates quality journalism rather than pilfering it.

A ‘Big Tent’

NewsGuard journalists have rated more than 36,000 news sources since 2018. The ratings are based on nine transparent, non-partisan basic journalistic criteria. Only sources rated as generally reliable are used by NewsGuard AI to generate responses. The 12,000 news and information sites rated as reliable are aggregated under a big tent that includes newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, opinion sites from across the political spectrum, local news startups, single-author news and commentary websites and Substacks, as well as the informational websites of state and local governments, think tanks, hospital systems, and research universities assessed as credible.

NewsGuard journalists trained NewsGuard AI with 41 editorial safeguards designed to provide responses that cite sources for every fact, report all sides of a story even-handedly with nuance, and suggest follow-up prompts based on a reader’s interests. Users will also be able to search the ratings of news sites and access NewsGuard’s Reality Check daily newsletter.

Put simply, NewsGuard AI is for people who want real news and information from reliable sources.

Journalism Versus Algorithm

NewsGuard AI bridges the gap between information reliability and the accelerating use of AI chatbots for news. Today’s leading AI models draw from everything on the internet, with little regard to whether the source is a trustworthy news organization or a healthcare hoax site or a foreign influence operation.

Since 2023, NewsGuard has regularly audited how the top 11 AI models respond to prompts on news topics, finding that they spread false claims on controversial topics 35 percent of the time, in part because disinformation networks have deliberately infected the internet where the top AI models indiscriminately retrieve content.  

As additional protection, NewsGuard AI includes a proprietary guardrail to its responses by accessing NewsGuard’s continuously updated catalog of 64,000 instances of significant false claims circulating online, debunked by NewsGuard journalists. This enables users to fact check dubious claims such as those spread by social media and get detailed debunks that they can share with friends and family.

The Opposite of the Big Tech Chatbots

“Think of how the existing AI chatbots operate, and in every respect, NewsGuard AI does the opposite,” said Chine Labbe, Senior Vice President for Partnerships and Managing Editor for Europe. “We only access reliable sources. We cite them prominently and link to them. We compensate them. And we use our proprietary debunking data as failsafe guardrails to prevent hallucinating.”

“NewsGuard AI will enable news publishers to benefit from the dramatic growth of AI use by sharing in revenue every time their journalism is cited in a response,” said Virginia Padovese, Managing Editor and Senior Vice President of Partnerships for Europe. “The LLMs instead shoplift journalism from many publishers by using their reporting without payment.”

Launching with Trusted Co-Marketing Partners of All Stripes with One Thing in Common: Reliability

In the coming weeks, NewsGuard AI will work with a growing coalition of quality publishers it is assembling in the nine countries where NewsGuard operates to make their readers aware of NewsGuard AI.

These are publishers that care about protecting the news and information ecosystem from the threat posed by Silicon Valley’s AI chatbots, and that want to promote a news chatbot that does exactly the opposite of what those chatbots do. Our fast-growing coalition — including newspapers and national magazines, public radio and television broadcasters, local news startups, specialty news sites, and independent Substacks — has agreed to become co-marketing partners by introducing NewsGuard AI to their readers with a free trial. In return, they receive half of the NewsGuard AI subscription revenue derived from those introductions.

Co-Marketing Partners will include large national magazines like The Atlantic in the U.S., regional newspapers like Ouest-France in France, political and cultural magazines like Italy’s Micromega, online-only news outlets like Austria’s 5min.at, and other organizations that believe in quality journalism and want it to be a beneficiary of AI rather than a victim.

“We plan to have dozens of these partners within our first year,” Labbe said.

Readers, subscribers, members, or donors of some Co-Marketing Partners in Europe will receive a free trial subscription to NewsGuard AI, after which they will be offered a substantial discount off of the €8.00 a month subscription fee for access to the chatbot. Co-Marketing partners will receive half of all revenue from subscribers they introduce to NewsGuard AI through their channels. This will generate additional revenue support for news beyond the compensation that all publishers will receive when their content is cited by NewsGuard AI in response to prompts.

A Powerful Education Tool

In addition to news publishers, partners will include universities, schools and other organizations committed to quality journalism and an informed democracy. They will offer students free access to NewsGuard AI while they are enrolled in a partner school.

NewsGuard AI will be offered to journalism students in France and Italy, including at France’s Conference of Journalism Schools (CEJ) and LUISS University’s School of Journalism, as well as graduate students in public policy, governance, and international affairs at the Berlin-based Hertie School, and students in Communication, Humanities, and Social Sciences at La Sapienza University of Rome. 

“We are delighted to be an academic launch partner of NewsGuard AI in Europe. Good public policy needs to be rooted in solid evidence — and that starts with getting the facts straight,” said Simon Munzert, Director of the Data Science Lab at the Hertie School in Germany.

“Our intention in using NewsGuard AI is not only to provide the next generation of professional journalists with accurate and reliable information, but also to strengthen their strategic ability to counter the spread of misinformation,” said Carlo Chianura, Director of Italy’s LUMSA University’s Journalism Master’s Program. “Offering a chatbot that only references reliable and verified sources means providing an informational safe space within a public arena saturated with disinformation, propaganda, and foreign interference,” said Alice Antheaume, Executive Dean of the Paris Sciences Po Journalism School. 

“This experience will not only allow us to demonstrate that concepts such as trustworthiness and reliability are not made obsolete by technological progress, but can be integrated into the informed consumption of information,” said Christian Ruggiero, Associate Professor in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Department of Communication and Social Research (CoRiS) of La Sapienza University in Italy. “It has the enormous advantage of demonstrating to our students what we have been advocating for years: the use of AI is not, and cannot be considered, a bad thing in itself; we must use it judiciously, equipping these potentially invaluable assistants in our work with the means to source reliable and up-to-date information, so that we can truly claim to have control over the process and authorship of the end product.”

NewsGuard AI is available at newsguard.ai. For more information, visit the NewsGuard AI page.

About NewsGuard

NewsGuard helps consumers and enterprises know the reliability of news sources and claims in the news, using transparent and apolitical data and tools. NewsGuard’s reporting and data are produced using a combination of human analysis scaled by technology.

NewsGuard was founded in the United States by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz. Brill is a longtime journalist and media entrepreneur, who has written multiple New York Times best sellers and won multiple National Magazine awards. He was the founder of Court TV, The American Lawyer, the Clear Registered Traveler service, and the Yale Journalism Initiative. Crovitz is a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal who led the Journal to its first one million digital subscribers, making it the largest digital subscription product online in the early 2000s. He was a long-time conservative opinion writer for the Journal and has also written for National Review, Reason, and the Heritage Foundation.

NewsGuard’s European team includes Virginia Padovese, Managing Editor and Senior Vice President of Partnerships for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand; Chine Labbé, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Managing Editor, Europe and Canada; and Roberta Schmid, Managing Editor and Senior Vice President of Partnerships, Europe. Together, they oversee NewsGuard’s editorial operations and partnerships across Europe. 

Prior to joining NewsGuard, Padovese worked for 10 years as a radio reporter, broadcaster, and digital producer for Special Broadcasting Service, a multicultural and multilingual television, online, and radio network in Australia, focusing on Italy and Italian media. Labbe previously worked as the host and producer of Good Code, a podcast on ethics in the digital world created within Cornell Tech’s Digital Life Initiative; as a reporter for Reuters in Paris; and as multimedia producer for The Economist in New York. Schmid previously interned for the German public broadcasters ZDF and Deutsche Welle News, as well as for the German Federal Foreign Office at the United Nations in Geneva. 

Interested in learning more or partnering with NewsGuard AI? Contact [email protected].