{"id":642800,"date":"2026-05-01T13:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642800\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:30:14","slug":"enhanced-games-founder-aron-dsouza-turns-to-ai-to-challenge-media-backed-by-paypal-co-founder-peter-thiel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642800\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhanced Games founder Aron D\u2019Souza turns to AI to challenge media, backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Australian founder of this month\u2019s controversial Enhanced Games says his new venture, a billionaire-backed \u201cAI Tribunal\u201d to challenge claims made about the uber-rich in the media, will restore trust in journalism rather than have a chilling effect on free speech.<\/p>\n

Aron D\u2019Souza, the London-based entrepreneur behind an alternative Olympics where athletes are allowed to take performance-enhancing drugs<\/a>, last month unveiled Objection, described as an AI judge for adjudicating media claims, with significant support from billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.<\/p>\n

\"AronAron D\u2019Souza is currently based in London, but is moving to New York following an investment from Donald Trump jnr in his Enhanced Games event.Grainne Quinlan<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, the core problem we are solving is that there is no accountability mechanism for the news media. The court system is too slow, and it\u2019s too expensive, and AI adjudication makes it all faster, cheaper and more accessible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is not perfect. AI hallucinates. However, human beings are more fallible.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a fee, starting from US$2000 ($2804), the subject of a story can file an objection. The company\u2019s internal investigators \u2013 D\u2019Souza says these are former FBI and CIA agents \u2013 then get to work scrutinising every line in the story.<\/p>\n

The journalist then has the opportunity to submit their own rebuttal, before Objection\u2019s AI comes up with a determination. Unlike a court, its decisions are not binding. But D\u2019Souza insists that if journalists refuse to participate, it\u2019s a sign that they don\u2019t believe in transparency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a journalist refuses to participate in an open, transparent truth-seeking process, that\u2019s highly destructive to their reputation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Objection is not the first time D\u2019Souza and Thiel have challenged the media. D\u2019Souza acted as a key go-between when Thiel secretly backed a lawsuit brought by wrestler Hulk Hogan against American gossip site Gawker after it posted a sex tape of him and the wife of radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge.<\/p>\n

Hogan eventually won a $US140 million payout over claims that the site had invaded his privacy, leaving\u00a0Gawker\u00a0ruined.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AronAron D\u2019Souza has unveiled a billionaire-backed AI platform to take on media reports.Peter Tarasiuk<\/p>\n

As well as that case, Melbourne-born D\u2019Souza cited this masthead\u2019s CBD Column<\/a> as an example of the kind of \u201cunsourced gossip\u201d that Objection aims to tackle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I can\u2019t even walk down the street in Australia without CBD writing about me.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a deeper level, D\u2019Souza said that Objection would help solve what he believes are some of the biggest problems in society today \u2013 a declining trust in the news media, and the lack of a shared truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe example I always give is that for a lot of Australians, they think the COVID pandemic was worse than the Holocaust, and in Florida, they think it didn\u2019t happen at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By allowing AI to determine the veracity of media articles, D\u2019Souza believes Objection will restore that sense of collective truth.<\/p>\n

For that to work, the venture will need to attract significant public buy-in. So far, most people interested in using the platform are billionaires, who D\u2019Souza says he has been on the phone with for days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about like, there\u2019s only 3000 billionaires in the world, right? There are many already attached to this project in one way or another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re signing more up as we speak. You know, I\u2019d say we have basically, low single-digit market penetration among the wealthiest people in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the first people to use the platform is Michael Sackler, scion of the family responsible for creating the highly addictive prescription drug OxyContin<\/a>, which has faced multiple lawsuits over its role in the American opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n

But D\u2019Souza said that the goal of Objection is not to have fewer articles written about the world\u2019s richest people.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Aron<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the goal of this is that every article that is written must stand up to the highest standards of peer review and external scrutiny,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not good enough that your overworked and underpaid editors get to make the decision about what is published because the power that journalists wield, in many ways, is more powerful than the biggest corporations or the richest individuals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Souza cited a Molotov cocktail attack on the home of his friend, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman<\/a>, which came days after an unrelated New Yorker\u00a0feature by journalist Ronan Farrow<\/a> on the tech mogul, as evidence of the power of reporting.<\/p>\n

Would submitting that article to Objection have stopped the attack on Altman\u2019s home?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt absolutely does because that content is going to help understand and give context to the overall narrative that Ronan [Farrow] created,\u201d D\u2019Souza said.<\/p>\n

\u201cExposing the raw source data will give the opportunity to find actually what is true and distinguish that from opinion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the premise of Objection, D\u2019Souza says his problem is not with journalists, but with media oligarchs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy axe to grind isn\u2019t with journalists, I think journalists do a great job. It\u2019s the media proprietors, it\u2019s the billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants who are saying, you know, publish clickbait.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day\u2019s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"KishorKishor Napier-Raman<\/a> is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-642800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}