Journalism
Background research at the speed of breaking news
Probe AI helps journalists, editors, and fact-checkers build comprehensive background research in minutes. 16 parallel agents search the web and X/Twitter to surface facts, stakeholder positions, expert voices, and source material with full citations.
The Problem
Newsrooms operate under constant deadline pressure. When a story breaks, journalists need background context immediately: who are the key players, what's been reported before, what are the competing narratives, and who has expertise on the topic. This research traditionally takes hours of manual searching, reading, and cross-referencing.
Fact-checking compounds the time pressure. Every claim in a story needs verification against primary sources, and those sources are scattered across government databases, academic publications, news archives, and social media. A single fact-check can require checking a dozen different sources.
Meanwhile, real-time social discussion on X/Twitter often contains eyewitness accounts, expert commentary, and stakeholder reactions that don't appear in traditional search results for hours or days. Journalists who miss this layer operate with an incomplete picture.
How Probe Helps
Rapid background research
When a story breaks, Probe can assemble background context in minutes: key facts, timeline of events, stakeholder positions, prior coverage, and relevant data. The structured report with cited sources serves as a starting point, not a substitute for original reporting.
Source discovery
Probe's agents search across academic publications, government sites, industry reports, news archives, and X/Twitter to identify potential sources and expert voices. The report surfaces people who have commented publicly on the topic, their affiliations, and links to their statements.
Claim verification
Input a specific claim, and Probe searches for supporting and contradicting evidence across multiple source types. The structured output separates verified facts from disputed claims, with citations for each. This doesn't replace editorial judgment but accelerates the verification process.
Real-time reaction monitoring
After publishing, use follow-up queries to track how a story is being received, shared, and discussed on X/Twitter and across the web. Identify corrections needed, follow-up angles, and the broader conversation around your coverage.
Example Queries
Why Web + X/Twitter
Breaking news and public discourse increasingly unfold on X/Twitter before traditional media can report on them. Eyewitness accounts, official statements, expert reactions, and public sentiment all appear in real-time threads. A journalist using web-only search tools works with a time delay.
At the same time, the web contains the primary sources that X/Twitter discussions reference: government documents, court filings, academic papers, corporate filings, and archival news coverage. Probe searches both layers simultaneously, connecting real-time social discussion with the underlying source material. This dual-source approach is particularly valuable for verifying claims that circulate on social media before they're confirmed or debunked by traditional outlets.
Recommended Tier
Deep Research ($2) provides the source diversity and reasoning depth that journalism demands, with 4 agents cross-referencing web and X/Twitter sources. For complex investigative topics with many stakeholders, Deep Research+ ($5) casts a wider net. Quick Research ($0.50) is useful for rapid fact-checks on specific claims or quick background lookups during deadline crunch.
Related use cases
New accounts receive $5 in free credits—enough for two full Deep Research background reports. No credit card required.