# Large Language Model Agent for Fake News Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01593 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01593/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 8 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Web, search, and research agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/web-search-and-research-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Encouraging Divergent Thinking in Large Language Models through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19118/) (2023)
- [FakeNewsNet: A Data Repository with News Content, Social Context and Spatialtemporal Information for Studying Fake News on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01286/) (2018)
- [Detection and Resolution of Rumours in Social Media: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00656/) (2017)
- [DeClarE: Debunking Fake News and False Claims using Evidence-Aware Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06416/) (2018)
- [Towards LLM-based Fact Verification on News Claims with a Hierarchical Step-by-Step Prompting Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00305/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [DEFAME: Dynamic Evidence-based FAct-checking with Multimodal Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10510/) (2024)
- [Unmasking Digital Falsehoods: A Comparative Analysis of LLM-Based Misinformation Detection Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00724/) (2025)
- [Hallucination to Truth: A Review of Fact-Checking and Factuality Evaluation in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03860/) (2025)
- [The Paradigm Shift: A Comprehensive Survey on Large Vision Language Models for Multimodal Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15316/) (2026)
- [From Evidence to Verdict: An Agent-Based Forensic Framework for AI-Generated Image Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00181/) (2025)
- [T^2Agent A Tool-augmented Multimodal Misinformation Detection Agent with Monte Carlo Tree Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19768/) (2025)
- [Breaking Event Rumor Detection via Stance-Separated Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04859/) (2024)
- [A Self-Learning Multimodal Approach for Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05843/) (2024)
- [Assessing the Potential of Generative Agents in Crowdsourced Fact-Checking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19940/) (2025)
- [Synthetic News Generation for Fake News Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24206/) (2025)
- [LLM-MRD: LLM-Guided Multi-View Reasoning Distillation for Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19293/) (2026)
- [RASR: Retrieval-Augmented Semantic Reasoning for Fake News Video Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06687/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the current digital era, the rapid spread of misinformation on online platforms presents significant challenges to societal well-being, public trust, and democratic processes, influencing critical decision making and public opinion. To address these challenges, there is a growing need for automated fake news detection mechanisms. Pre-trained large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional capabilities across various natural language processing (NLP) tasks, prompting exploration into their potential for verifying news claims. Instead of employing LLMs in a non-agentic way, where LLMs generate responses based on direct prompts in a single shot, our work introduces FactAgent, an agentic approach of utilizing LLMs for fake news detection. FactAgent enables LLMs to emulate human expert behavior in verifying news claims without any model training, following a structured workflow. This workflow breaks down the complex task of news veracity checking into multiple sub-steps, where LLMs complete simple tasks using their internal knowledge or external tools. At the final step of the workflow, LLMs integrate all findings throughout the workflow to determine the news claim's veracity. Compared to manual human verification, FactAgent offers enhanced efficiency. Experimental studies demonstrate the effectiveness of FactAgent in verifying claims without the need for any training process. Moreover, FactAgent provides transparent explanations at each step of the workflow and during final decision-making, offering insights into the reasoning process of fake news detection for end users. FactAgent is highly adaptable, allowing for straightforward updates to its tools that LLMs can leverage within the workflow, as well as updates to the workflow itself using domain knowledge. This adaptability enables FactAgent's application to news verification across various domains.