Twitter Inc. today announced that it has bought Fabula AI Ltd., a London-based startup with a deep learning platform for detecting disinformation on online platforms.

The acquisition follows a number of earlier AI investments from the social network. In 2016, Twitter paid a reported $150 million to acquire Magic Pony Ltd. another British startup that focused on harnessing AI to process media content. It previously absorbed two fledgling, prelaunch machine learning startups called Madbits Inc. and Whetlab Ltd.

Fabula AI hasn’t had time to launch its offering into general availability either, with its team having planned to do later this year. The startup’s software uses an emerging AI technique called geometric deep learning to find patterns in online content that may reveal the existence of disinformation. Fabula AI’s algorithms doesn’t analyze the content itself, but rather evaluates the manner and speed in which it spreads to determine if there’s reason for suspicion.

Since the AI need not understand what a post is saying to make an assessment, it can be easily be applied across different languages without requiring significant customizations. That should make it somewhat simpler for Twitter to bake the technology into its platform.

“By studying and understanding the Twitter graph, comprised of the millions of Tweets, Retweets and Likes shared on Twitter every day, we will be able to improve the health of the conversation, as well as products including the timeline, recommendations, the explore tab and the onboarding experience,” Twitter Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal wrote in a blog post.

The social network’s decision to buy Fabula AI was apparently driven at least as much by the credentials of the founding team as its technology. The startup’s chief scientist is Michael Bronstein, a professor at London’s Imperial College who serves as the chair of machine learning and pattern recognition at its computer science department. Chief Technologist Federico Monti is a doctoral candidate pursuing research into geometric deep learning.

Bronstein will join Twitter as head of graph deep learning. He and the rest of the Fabula AI team will become part of the social network’s Cortex machine learning group.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Photo: Twitter