At AI festival in Prague, visitors get a closer look at how news outlets cover the same story

In the heart of Czechia’s capital, a crowd of curious minds gathered around a table with a screen and keyboard to ask questions about current events they wanted to know more about.

Their queries ranged from the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war to what appeared to be the latest news on President Donald Trump, among other things.

It wasn’t your typical ChatGPT search engine receiving the questions, though.

People noticed that this AI-powered tool had a different functionality, with a list of news sources showing political labels connected to the search results from the Ask Engine.

The Europe team at Newsmatics put its revamped Perspectify platform on full display at this year’s AI Festival at the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague.

Jakub Leps, chief content officer at Newsmatics, said that the Nov. 7 event was one for the books, where some 1,000 attendees got to explore about 34 exhibitors covering AI in news, education, health care, academia and more.

“Clearly, people are concerned about the reliability of answers provided by various AI models. Which is why I was impressed by how well the attendees reacted to our Ask Engine,” Leps said. “They appreciated the transparency and the fact that its answers are based exclusively on verified online news sources.”

Perspectify’s Ask Engine is an AI-powered search tool developed by EIN Presswire’s parent company, Newsmatics, that allows users to explore various topics and see how different news outlets across the political spectrum cover them.

For communicators, the free tool can offer a quick glimpse into how different news outlets are framing a topic, helping them identify trends in coverage, compare perspectives and better understand the broader media conversation surrounding an issue.

It can also help PR professionals better understand reporters’ beats and refine their media pitches accordingly. And for journalists, Perspectify can serve as an additional reporting resource, providing background information such as media ownership.

In today’s news landscape, where media trust and accountability are often questioned by news consumers, Newsmatics CEO David Rothstein said in an interview with Editor & Publisher that tools like Perspectify are giving them better information to make judgments themselves.

As Rothstein says, “trust infrastructure” has become a guiding principle behind Newsmatics’ products and tools, helping make information more transparent by showing users where it comes from and how it is sourced.

Through Perspectify, Rothstein envisions working toward an era where readers “shouldn’t have to become detectives” to find out who is accountable for a news story.

As for those curious-minded visitors at the event who experimented with Perspectify, the answers they received through the Ask Engine may look different today.

That’s because the tool updates as new reporting emerges from news outlets across the political spectrum.

For example, when asked about the Russia-Ukraine conflict after the festival, Perspectify analyzed reporting from a news database that processes more than 100,000 articles per day and summarized recent developments.

It noted that “Russia, Ukraine and the United States began two-day peace talks in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10, the first trilateral discussions since February,” adding that key disputes between Moscow and Kyiv remain unresolved in areas such as territory, Ukraine’s future security guarantees, NATO membership, and postwar military arrangements.

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