Can artificial intelligence judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks terrorizing whistleblowers

After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media company Gawker, Aaron D’Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system: People who felt hurt by coverage had few resources to fight back.

The solution is software. D’Souza says his latest startup, objectionIt aims to use artificial intelligence to determine the truth in journalism. For $2,000, anyone can pay to challenge a story, triggering a public investigation into its claims. (D’Souza is also a founder Enhanced games(An Olympics-style competition that allows the use of performance-enhancing drugs, is scheduled to make its debut in Las Vegas next month.)

Objection launched on Wednesday with “multi-million” seed funding from Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as venture capital firms Social Impact Capital and Off Piste Capital.

Thiel, who He funded the Gawker lawsuit Partly in defense of the individual’s right to privacy, he has long been critical of the media. D’Souza says his goal is to restore confidence in the fourth estate, which he says has collapsed over decades. Critics, including media lawyers, warn that objection could make it more difficult to publish the kind of reporting that holds powerful institutions accountable, especially if that reporting relies on confidential sources.

Anonymous sources have played a key role in major award-winning investigations into corruption and corporate wrongdoing. These are often people who are at risk of losing their jobs or facing other retaliation for sharing important information. It is the journalist’s job – along with their publication’s editors, colleagues and lawyers – to ensure that these sources are reliable, that they are not acting out of malice, and to verify the information they provide.

But that’s not enough for D’Souza, who said that “using a completely anonymous source that has not been independently verified” would lead to lower evidence and a degree of confidence in the objection. Under the platform heading, primary records such as regulatory filings and official emails carry the most weight, while anonymous whistleblower claims are ranked near the bottom. This input is collected in part by a team of freelancers — former law enforcement agents and investigative journalists — and is ultimately entered into what Objection calls the “Honour Index,” a numerical score that the company says reflects a reporter’s integrity, accuracy and track record.

“Protecting source information is a vital way to tell an important story, but there is an important power asymmetry there,” D’Souza told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “The topic is reported, but then there is no way to critique the source.”

His solution represents a loss for journalists: either expose sensitive source information to Objection’s “cryptographic hash” that determines “whether reporting is of high quality,” or face the disadvantage of protecting sources who share important information at great personal risk. If technology like Intercept takes off, it could discourage whistleblowing, experts say.

Jane Kirtley, a lawyer and professor of media law and ethics at the University of Minnesota, says the objection fits a long pattern of attacks that erode public trust in journalism.

“If the underlying theme is: ‘This is another example of how the media is lying to you,’ then this is another chink in the armor to help destroy public trust in independent journalism,” she said, adding that it was clear that journalists needed to do their part to be as transparent as possible in their reporting.

Kirtley pointed to current journalistic standards, such as the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which advise reporters to use anonymous sources only when there is no other way to obtain the information. She also cited long-standing industry practices such as peer critiques and internal editorial review as built-in accountability methods. More broadly, I wondered whether Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who are not steeped in journalistic tradition, are equipped to evaluate what is in the public interest.

D’Souza says the objection is not an attempt to silence whistleblowers: “It’s an attempt to fact-check; it’s the same societal observations of X. The wisdom of the crowd plus the power of technology to create new ways of telling the truth.”

When asked whether the objection might make it difficult for the media to publish important stories that hold the authority accountable, he said: “If you raise the standards of transparency and trust, that is a good thing.”

He describes Objection as a “trustless system” with a transparent methodology that relies on a jury made up of large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Mistral, and Google, which are urged to act as lay readers and evaluate the evidence for each claim. The company’s chief technologist, Kyle Grant Talbot, a former NASA and SpaceX engineer, is leading technical development on the platform, which D’Souza says is designed to apply scientific rigor to disputes over facts.

The proposal comes as AI systems themselves face scrutiny for bias, hallucinations and transparency, all of which could complicate their use as arbiters of truth.

While the objection can be applied to any published content, including podcasts and social media, D’Souza’s focus remains largely on legacy and print media.

“Each objection is limited to one factual allegation,” D’Souza said in a follow-up email. “This means that even when reports are long and complex, the objection will be limited to a narrow factual issue within it. The user may choose to submit multiple objections to different parts of the same article, but all of these objections will be made independently of each other.”

Objections cost $2,000, which is prohibitive for most Americans, but relatively inexpensive for wealthy individuals or corporations who might otherwise go to court. D’Souza said he expects the platform will serve people who feel misrepresented in the media. But critics point out that those most able to use objection are likely to be the same powerful actors who already have other ways to respond.

“The fact that this is a sort of pay-to-play system…tells me that they are less interested in providing useful information to the general public and more interested in giving the already powerful a way to intimidate their journalistic opponents,” Kirtley said.

First Amendment and defamation attorney Chris Mattei was more blunt, saying the platform “seems like a high-tech protection racket for the rich and powerful.”

“At a time when many are trying to hide the truth, we should encourage whistleblowers who have knowledge of wrongdoing,” said Mattei, a senior litigator. “The purpose of this company seems to be the opposite.”

The system also only evaluates evidence presented to it, including party submissions and materials collected by its investigators, raising questions about how it handles incomplete or undisclosed information, which is common in investigative reporting.

When asked how to prevent abuse, such as companies being targeted for unfavorable coverage or the system itself lacking sensitive evidence, D’Souza said journalists can provide their own evidence to protect their reputations. This effectively requires that reporters participate in a system they did not choose, a system that can jeopardize their credibility. If they don’t, the system may return an “indeterminable” result, which could cast doubt on reports that are accurate but difficult to verify publicly.

Even when Objection finds nothing wrong with the story, the accompanying feature called “Fire Blanket” still casts doubt on its credibility. The tool, currently active on

Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at the University of California, said the platform itself would likely not violate free speech protections, positioning it instead as part of the broader ecosystem of criticism that surrounds journalism. He compared the concept to opposition research targeting journalists rather than politicians, and rejected the idea that it would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers.

“All the criticism creates a chilling effect,” he told TechCrunch.

Whether anyone embraces it, or simply ignores it, may determine whether the opposition reshapes journalism or fades away in the growing ecosystem of tools trying to do so.

Or as Kirtley put it: “Why do you think that an AI would necessarily give you more reliable information about the truth or falsity of the truth than the journalist who researched and wrote the story? I mean, why would you assume that? I wouldn’t assume that at all.”

Editor’s Note: Since D’Souza’s proposal focuses on transparency and accountability, we will publish the link to the full text.