Toutiao is making fake news to train its anti-fake news AI

Toutiao’s AI software did not generate this headline, but for the 20 million pieces of content that flow through the platform each day, headline generation and AB testing are just two of the AI services Toutiao uses to get more people tapping.

Speaking to foreign journalists for the first time as head of the Jinri Toutiao AI Lab and vice president of the app’s owner Bytedance, Dr. Ma Wei-Ying talked about the tech that his lab is working on, why it has a bot that generates fake news and what it knows about its users.

Jinri Toutiao is a news recommendation app that is trained and updated in real time on a user’s behavior. Unlike search engines, Ma pointed out, its search function is individual rather than one ranking for everyone.

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