Toutiao, China's top news aggregator app, announced recently that it will be cooperating with the University of Michigan to build a global anti-rumor AI platform, local media reported on Jan 18.

Both parties will strengthen R&D on abilities on natural language processing (NLP) to improve the accuracy of automatic rumor recognition models.

Toutiao's artificial intelligent and media laboratories will join a team led by Professor Qiaozhu Mei from the University of Michigan to combat online rumors and false vulgar messages through AI technologies.

Professor Qiaozhu Mei, funded by the National Science Foundation, has operated tools to help users authenticate information. He also hosted three projects supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"Our company's cooperation with the University of Michigan on anti-rumors can help us to more accurately check rumors, and provide a better model of AI rumor identification technology,” said Li Hang, head of the Toutiao's AI laboratory.

Toutiao set up and opened its rumor database last March, and has now identified and filed more than 20,000 rumor stories and 400,000 rumor articles on social issues, health and entertainment. The recognition model can effectively reduce the secondary spread of false information.

Based in Zhongguancun Science Park, the company is riding the boom of China's online content creation sector that could become a multibillion-dollar business by 2020.

Zhang Yiming, founder and CEO of Toutiao. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]