Meta on Friday announced a significant expansion of its artificial intelligence assistant, revealing new partnerships with major global news organisations to deliver real-time information across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The move marks one of the company’s most direct integrations of professional news content into its AI products in recent years.

According to an AFP report, Meta AI will now provide users with breaking news, entertainment updates and lifestyle stories drawn from a wide network of publishers whenever they ask news-related questions. The partnerships include well-known outlets such as CNN, Fox News, Le Monde, People and USA Today, reflecting what the company called an effort to bring “more diverse content sources” into its ecosystem.

In a blog post, Meta said the goal of the expansion is to make its AI assistant “more responsive, accurate, and balanced,” especially at a time when AI systems often struggle to keep pace with fast-moving developments. The company added that these integrations will offer users direct links to partner websites, helping them explore stories in greater depth while providing publishers with additional referral traffic.

Meta emphasised that the newly onboarded organisations span a wide ideological range, noting that the initial list also includes conservative-leaning publications such as The Daily Caller and The Washington Examiner. The company said it will continue adding more partners and developing additional features as competition rises among tech giants racing to advance AI-powered information delivery.

Meta AI is already active across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other products serving billions of users, and the company hopes the strengthened news integration will enhance the assistant’s usefulness as more people rely on AI for real-time answers.

The latest announcement comes at a particularly notable moment in Meta’s often turbulent relationship with the news media. Over the past several years, the company has repeatedly shifted its strategy — from promoting news content heavily to phasing it out on many markets. Facebook News was shut down in the United States, Britain and France after Meta declared that news made up only a small fraction of user engagement, bringing an end to multimillion-dollar publisher deals.

Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg also abruptly discontinued Meta’s US fact-checking program, dissolving partnerships with third-party fact checkers, including teams from AFP, that were responsible for identifying misinformation on the platform. The decision aligned with a broader retreat from news and civic information initiatives as Meta redirected resources toward AI development.

With its latest partnerships, however, the company appears to be taking a different path—one that brings traditional news content back into its platforms, but this time, through the lens of artificial intelligence.