Meta is bringing real-time news back to its platforms, but this time, it's through AI
After killing its News Tab and cutting publisher payouts, Meta just signed multiyear deals with CNN, Fox News, and USA Today to power its AI chatbot with breaking news.
Meta spent years distancing itself from news publishers. It killed Facebook’s News Tab in 2024. It stopped paying publishers in 2022. Traffic to news sites from Facebook collapsed. Now, the company is back at the negotiating table, this time paying for content to feed Meta AI, its AI-powered assistant.
The company just announced multiyear licensing deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today, Le Monde, and People Inc. to integrate real-time news into Meta AI. Starting this week, when users ask about current events, the chatbot will surface information and direct links to partner articles across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
The timing matters. Meta’s announcement came one day after The New York Times sued Perplexity AI for copyright infringement. By licensing content rather than scraping it, Meta positions itself on the right side of a legal battle that’s splitting the AI industry. OpenAI and Microsoft have struck similar deals. Google and Perplexity face lawsuits. Cloudflare recently reported blocking 416 billion AI bot requests between July and December 2025 — nearly 3 billion denials daily.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
For Meta, the stakes are high. The company is locked in an AI race with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. ChatGPT handles more than 2.5 billion prompts daily. Meta AI is available in over 200 countries, but it needs differentiation. Real-time news is one answer. It will give it an edge in addressing a core weakness in current AI systems that struggle with breaking events.
The publisher list spans the political spectrum deliberately: Fox News and The Daily Caller sit alongside CNN and international outlets. It’s a calculated move after Facebook faced accusations of political bias with its Trending Topics feature in 2016.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance representing hundreds of outlets, called the deals “a win for all publishers in the long-running battle to get paid for the use of their content by LLMs.” The agreements also drive traffic back to publisher websites — something Facebook’s algorithmic feed no longer does.
Meta’s advantage lies in distribution. With billions already using its apps, adoption barriers are low. The challenge is execution. CEO Mark Zuckerberg committed $60 to $65 billion for AI expansion in 2025, and this news strategy is part of that bet.
For publishers, the equation is simple: get paid or get scraped. Meta is offering the first option. Whether that rebuilds trust after years of broken promises remains to be seen.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
