A new startup has a radical plan: bring disputed news stories before an artificial-intelligence-powered tribunal that will rule on whether the claims are true or false.
Objection — founded by Aron D’Souza and backed by Peter Thiel, both of whom were involved in one of the most contentious media lawsuits of the past decade — says users can pay a minimum of $2,000 to challenge any media claim and trigger what the company describes as an AI-driven investigation and adjudication process.
The company says it can resolve disputes in as few as three days, saving clients years of costly litigation.
Critics say Objection cannot simply anoint itself as an arbiter of truth. They suggest this private, pay-to-challenge model will chill press freedom and harass reporters already under strain from shrinking budgets and political hostility.
How does Objection work?
The clash is not just a debate over technology. It also highlights more fundamental questions about who — or what — should referee the truth in an era of deep distrust.
Objection, which launched and went live on April 15, says it invites any paid user to challenge any public statement, regardless of who published it or when.
If all parties agree, a dispute is resolved through the company’s binding arbitration process instead of through the courts. If a reporter or author chooses not to participate, the “verdict” is still made public, but it is not binding.
The process begins when a client identifies a media claim they wish to contest. The claim’s author is notified and given the opportunity to respond with a correction or supporting evidence.
Objection then gathers all the evidence it can using its own AI program and human investigators who have backgrounds in intelligence agencies like the CIA or FBI, or in journalism.
That evidence is fed into its “AI tribunal,” which hands down a verdict. The verdict, evidence and full reasoning are “published in a permanent, shareable public record,” the company says.
Already, potential cases are emerging for Objection’s scrutiny.
Should Kash Patel’s defamation case go to an AI tribunal?
FBI Director Kash Patel this week sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick for $250 million after the magazine published a report that accused him of erratic behavior, bouts of excessive drinking and unexplained absences from work. The Atlantic cited more than two dozen sources — current and former FBI employees, officials at other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, members of Congress and others. All, however, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and private conversations.
“Anonymously sourced hit pieces do not constitute journalism,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in defending Patel, who has strongly denied the article’s claims.
To D’Souza, this is exactly the kind of dispute that should be resolved through Objection.
And, in an interview with Straight Arrow on Tuesday, the day after Patel filed the defamation suit against The Atlantic, he hinted that at least one side might be interested in his company’s services.
“I actually have some WhatsApp messages in my inbox from senior people in the administration,” he said. “I probably can’t say anything more than that.”
Within a week of launching Objection, D’Souza said, he heard from “some of the most prominent people in the world” who told him they’ve been “battered and bruised” by media claims. He also said journalists told him they want a quick resolution to contested claims.
A somewhat unexpected supporter of Objection is Viet Dinh, the former chief legal and policy officer of Fox Corp.
Dinh defended Fox in a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over claims that the company was part of a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Just before the case was scheduled to go to trial, Fox settled the case by agreeing to pay Dominion a reported $787 million.
“Truth is not relative, and Objection gives the facts to belie the myths,” Dinh told Straight Arrow. “This is what democracy desperately needs and craves.”
Shutting down Gawker
A decade before launching Objection, D’Souza orchestrated one of the most successful legal campaigns against a media outlet in recent history.
In 2016, he reportedly convinced Thiel to secretly put up $10 million to fund the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s privacy lawsuit against news and gossip site Gawker, which had also published unflattering articles about Thiel. The case resulted in a $140 million jury award that drove Gawker into bankruptcy. The outlet was then sold and shut down.
D’Souza is also the founder of the Enhanced Games, a planned multi-sport event that aims to disrupt the Olympic model by allowing athletes to use some performance-enhancing drugs. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor through 1789 Capital.
Thiel, a billionaire tech investor, was an early and prominent supporter of candidate Donald Trump in 2016, who has at times distanced himself personally from the president. Vice President JD Vance has described Thiel as a mentor.
Although Thiel has attacked the media, he also wrote in a New York Times op-ed after the Gawker trial that “a free press is vital for public debate.”
“Since sensitive information can sometimes be publicly relevant, exercising judgment is always part of the journalist’s profession,” Thiel wrote. “It’s not for me to draw the line, but journalists should condemn those who willfully cross it.”
Would an AI tribunal chill confidential whistleblowing?
Critics said Objection is designed to hamstring journalists and pressure them into divulging sensitive information, including the identity of confidential sources. Patel’s case, they said, illustrates the potential threat.
The allegations in The Atlantic’s story depict a significant national security issue, said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties organization. “And it’s a very good example of reporting that we would not get if we did not protect anonymous sources.“
Ruane said that while the court system may be frustratingly slow, AI is not equipped to perform the nuanced evaluation of whether or not a news story is protected by the First Amendment.
D’Souza told Straight Arrow that Objection “can help restore trust in journalism,” but did not deny it could also deter whistleblowers and confidential sources from coming forward.
“It’s better to go on the record, defend yourself and fight for what is right,” D’Souza said. “It’s easy to hide behind the cover of being an anonymous source.”
He considered a hypothetical example in which that source is an Iranian dissident whose life would be at risk by speaking on the record.
“I admire those who have the courage to stand up and do so in a very public way,” he said.
However, anonymous sourcing has played an essential role in some of the most consequential reporting of recent decades, including the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.
Confidential disclosures by Mark Felt, then the FBI’s associate director and later revealed as a source known as “Deep Throat,” helped The Washington Post uncover abuses of power at the highest level of the Nixon White House. If Felt had spoken to reporter Bob Woodward on the record, he most likely would have lost his job along with his access to key information.
Established media outlets, including Straight Arrow, typically follow strict guidelines about the use of anonymous sources. Like those at many other news organizations, Straight Arrow’s policy says these carefully screened sources should be used sparingly — only when the information is vital and otherwise unavailable — and their identities must be known to the reporter and an editor.
Veteran journalists say anonymous sourcing, when used responsibly, can serve the public interest.
“There are good anonymous sources,” said Chris Vlasto, a 30-year veteran of ABC News who headed the network’s investigations unit. “We should protect them, and we shouldn’t penalize journalists for using them.”
Vlasto told Straight Arrow that reports using confidential sources, at least at ABC News, are rigorously vetted by legal and news standards teams and require corroborating evidence.
In 1998, Vlasto used an anonymous source to uncover new details about the relationship between President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The White House attacked his reporting, he said, “but we knew the information was true. We knew who our source was, and to this day, I still protect that person’s identity.”
Vlasto is now co-founder of Haven Strategies, a strategic communications firm. In this role, he defends clients whose reputations, he said, can be destroyed in seconds by anonymous sources or so-called “citizen journalists” posting lies on platforms like X or TikTok. He said legacy media has guardrails, but social media is the “Wild West.”
Today, many legacy outlets have pulled back from resource-intensive investigative reporting in an era of shrinking newsrooms, budget cuts and the threat of costly litigation. This is especially true in local news, Ruane said, where “there are almost certainly rings of corruption in state and local government that aren’t being reported on.”
When a system like Objection puts additional burdens on whistleblowers and journalists, she said, it fuels what is already “a five-alarm fire.”
Is AI a better judge of truth than a human?
Objection assigns its AI the role of both judge and jury. D’Souza argued that the AI he built, using algorithms that he publicly discloses, is a better arbiter of truth than human reviewers.
“In a court of law, you have a fallible, weak human judge,” he said. Judges are “overworked, underpaid and have very few resources.” While AI isn’t perfect, it can synthesize large amounts of evidence and apply the law consistently.
D’Souza also claimed that his AI lacks the bias of a human judge: It doesn’t reach different conclusions based on its fatigue or hunger or on the physical attractiveness of the litigants, for example.
Ruane pushed back on this point. “Of course, an algorithm or an automated decision-making system is biased,” she said. “It’s made by people who determine what it should or shouldn’t prioritize and what happens when you give it an input.”
Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed, telling Straight Arrow there are responsible ways to fact-check reporters, but this is not one of them.
“It is simply a recipe for chilling press freedoms and sending mobs to harass journalists,” Galperin said.
“I would be more concerned about the use of AI to lend Objection’s judgments an air of objectivity,” she added, “if I thought there was any chance that people would take this seriously.”
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