About Current News

Current News reads the news so you don't have to. We use AI to pull together stories from six major Australian sources, extract the key facts, and present them in one place — so you can stay informed in minutes, not hours.

How it works

  1. We scrape six major Australian news sources every few hours — ABC, The Guardian, SMH, The Age, SBS, and News.com.au.
  2. Articles are clustered by topic using AI embeddings and semantic similarity, so stories covering the same event are grouped together regardless of how each outlet frames it.
  3. Claude AI reads every article in a cluster and identifies only the facts reported by two or more independent sources — these become the "Verified by 2+ sources" consensus points you see on each story.
  4. Source-specific angles and contradictions are also surfaced, so you can see where outlets diverge and draw your own conclusions.

Why we built it

Australian news consumers are busy. Reading six outlets to triangulate the truth on a single story takes time most people don't have. At the same time, every outlet has its own editorial angle — what gets emphasised, what gets buried, and what gets omitted varies significantly.

We believe a well-informed public is a healthier democracy. Current News is our attempt to make it easier to find the signal in the noise.

What we are not

  • We are not a news outlet — we do not produce original journalism.
  • We are not a fact-checking service — we surface cross-source agreement, not verified truth.
  • We are not affiliated with any of the news organisations we index.

Every story links directly to the original articles. We strongly encourage you to read the source reporting and support quality journalism.

Editorial standards

Every summary on Current News is built from a structured, multi-step editorial process:

  • Only multi-source facts are surfaced. A consensus point is only included if it appears in two or more independent news sources — single-source claims are separated out and clearly labelled.
  • Contradictions are disclosed. Where sources disagree, we surface the contradiction rather than resolve it — you decide what to make of it.
  • Every claim links to an original article. Source articles are always listed so you can verify anything you read here.
  • We cover all sides. We index sources from across the Australian media landscape — public broadcasters, broadsheets, and tabloids — so no single editorial perspective dominates.

AI assists with summarisation and clustering but the cross-verification logic, source selection, and disclosure standards are designed and maintained by our team. We review and refine the process continuously.

A note on AI-generated content

The summaries and consensus points on this site are generated by Claude (Anthropic's AI model). AI can make mistakes. Summaries should be treated as a starting point, not a definitive account. Always follow the source links to read the full original reporting before acting on anything you read here.

Who we are

Current News is built and maintained by The AI Playground, a Melbourne-based startup building AI tools that make everyday life easier and better informed.

We're a small team that cares deeply about the quality of public discourse in Australia. This project is our contribution to that.

Get in touch

We'd love to hear from you — whether it's feedback, a bug report, a story we're missing, or an idea for how to make the site better.

Email us at feedback@the-ai-playground.com or use the Contact Us form in the sidebar on the home page.

If you find this useful, you can also buy us a coffee — it helps keep the servers running.