Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AI4Debunk (Participative Assistive AI-powered Tools for Supporting Trustworthy Online Activity of Citizens and Debunking Disinformation)
Période du rapport: 2024-01-01 au 2024-12-31
To revolutionize the fight against disinformation, a four-year innovation action, AI4Debunk, has been launched January 2024. Funded by the European Union (EU) through the Horizon Europe Programme under the Grant Agreement No. 101135757, the project brings together an interdisciplinary consortium of 13 partner entities from eight countries towards a shared mission: to support trustworthy online activity by providing citizens with human-centered AI-powered tools. This EU project is committed to safeguarding democratic values and fostering a more informed and resilient society in response to the challenges posed by the digital age.
The partnership involves various stakeholders, from media professionals to software developers and AI experts, this new EU project takes a holistic approach to fighting disinformation through Human-AI collaboration. It will be validated with two case studies: Russian propaganda related to the war in Ukraine and manipulated content on climate change.
AI4Debunk aims to develop four human-centered AI-powered interfaces: a web plug-in, a collaborative platform, a smartphone app, and an Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality interface based on the first-of-its-kind open-source debunking API. The plug-in will be designed for seamless integration with web browsers and social media platforms, delivering instant notifications to users when they encounter false content, regardless of the format. As for the collaborative platform (Disinfopedia), it will allow proactive users to report suspicious content, which will then be checked by human experts and potentially removed from circulation. The app, in turn, will enable people to detect disinformation in everyday life directly through their smartphone. Lastly, the AR/VR interface will provide guidelines on how to deal with disinformation in future AR/VR-based social media. AI4Debunk’s interfaces cover different needs – from real-time analysis of multimodal content to community-driven reporting and immersive experiences. These will provide citizens with a comprehensive set of fact-checking resources to navigate the digital media landscape more consciously and make informed decisions. These interfaces will also be innovatively and playfully designed for educational purposes to help students become discerning consumers of information.
Links
- Website: ai4debunk.eu
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ai4debunk
- Twitter/X: twitter.com/ai4debunk
- Facebook: facebook.com/ai4debunk
- YouTube: youtube.com/@ai4debunk
Contacts
E-mail: info@ai4debunk.eu
The partnership involves various stakeholders, from media professionals to software developers and AI experts, this new EU project takes a holistic approach to fighting disinformation through Human-AI collaboration. It will be validated with two case studies: Russian propaganda related to the war in Ukraine and manipulated content on climate change.
AI4Debunk aims to develop four human-centered AI-powered interfaces: a web plug-in, a collaborative platform, a smartphone app, and an Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality interface based on the first-of-its-kind open-source debunking API. The plug-in will be designed for seamless integration with web browsers and social media platforms, delivering instant notifications to users when they encounter false content, regardless of the format. As for the collaborative platform (Disinfopedia), it will allow proactive users to report suspicious content, which will then be checked by human experts and potentially removed from circulation. The app, in turn, will enable people to detect disinformation in everyday life directly through their smartphone. Lastly, the AR/VR interface will provide guidelines on how to deal with disinformation in future AR/VR-based social media. AI4Debunk’s interfaces cover different needs – from real-time analysis of multimodal content to community-driven reporting and immersive experiences. These will provide citizens with a comprehensive set of fact-checking resources to navigate the digital media landscape more consciously and make informed decisions. These interfaces will also be innovatively and playfully designed for educational purposes to help students become discerning consumers of information.
Links
- Website: ai4debunk.eu
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ai4debunk
- Twitter/X: twitter.com/ai4debunk
- Facebook: facebook.com/ai4debunk
- YouTube: youtube.com/@ai4debunk
Contacts
E-mail: info@ai4debunk.eu
All project management structures have been set up and activated, Grant and Consortium Agreements were signed. Relevant deliverables were prepared and submitted on time – Project Management Handbook, Quality Assessment Plan and Data Management Plan and Self Assessment Plan. Two working papers were prepared: 1) Theoretical framework for the analysis of disinformation campaigns and foreign interference in the EU policy making; 2) Information manipulation in the EU media ecosystem and response effectiveness. The Ethics Advisor was selected and started working from the beginning of project and the Ethics Committee was established. Two deliverables related to ethics issues were completed – Ethics Guidelines and the first Ethics periodic report were provided. The first project’s Milestone was reached by preparing the Gender Equality Plan. Starting data sets (2) of fake statements and related multimedia contents were prepared and will further feed into the knowledge graphs. The work on all work packages has been initiated and is ongoing.
In the first mapping of project results, partners have identified main project results. The initial findings are open to further discussion and additional project results may emerge. A preliminary identification of 6 key exploitable results that are selected and prioritised as the main results beyond the state of the art for their significant potential to be exploited by project partners or by other stakeholders were identified. The work has been started towards achieving these results on the later stages of the project. First of all, an important progress has been achieved for developing knowledge graphs which will feed into disinformation detection modules and further AI modules. Also, the research work was completed leading to first important conclusions about the nature of disinformation campaigns and foreign interference in the policy making, as well as the information manipulation in the media ecosystem and response effectiveness.
The implementation of activities during the 1st year will support the development of a sociological framework of analysis. The sociological analysis including researchers from different partner organizations will go through state of the art research on AI and disinformation impacts on citizens’ perceptions and behaviors, the identification of narratives and fake news in the national contexts, the critical analysis of citizens’ perceptions linked to manipulated content, the sociological analysis of the resilience mechanisms to disinformation thanks to the proposed tools, and go through the multi-stakeholders analysis of the proposed tools with recommendations of the stakeholders.
In addition, an active communication and dissemination work is ongoing to introduce with first results national services and ministries, as well as public at large.
The implementation of activities during the 1st year will support the development of a sociological framework of analysis. The sociological analysis including researchers from different partner organizations will go through state of the art research on AI and disinformation impacts on citizens’ perceptions and behaviors, the identification of narratives and fake news in the national contexts, the critical analysis of citizens’ perceptions linked to manipulated content, the sociological analysis of the resilience mechanisms to disinformation thanks to the proposed tools, and go through the multi-stakeholders analysis of the proposed tools with recommendations of the stakeholders.
In addition, an active communication and dissemination work is ongoing to introduce with first results national services and ministries, as well as public at large.