Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRUTHCHECK (Fake News Recognition applying Service-based Cross-Media Analytics)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2019-02-01 do 2019-05-31
The phenomenon of fake news is as old as human’s ability to communicate. From the onset of civilisation false information has been distributed by adversaries to shape history and make empires rise and fall. But never before has technology made it so easy to spread fake news unfiltered with unprecedented speed straight to unprotected masses, resulting in the disruption of democratic processes. US 2016 elections, Brexit and Catalonia have just been the visible tip of the iceberg. Democracy´s survival depends on the ability to flag fake news and protect citizens from undemocratic influencers, otherwise risking the type of democracy as we know it in Europe.
At SAIL LABS we are developing TruthCheck, a software tool that applies Machine-Learning algorithms, Trust Modelling, Natural Language Processing and Speech, Image and Video Recognition to verify feeds from TV, Radio, Newspapers, Internet and Social Media in 31 languages. TruthCheck will be offered as SaaS -a web tool that provides full, standardised verification options- to private users and educational institutions as free version, and to enterprises, NGOs and governmental institutions as paid version. We also offer it as DaaS (Data-as-a-Service; API-integration into on premise systems for continuous fact checking) to media corporations and brokers to have them assess news feeds directly on our servers.
Evaluation of Technical feasibility: definition of the technical plan for the development of TruthCheck, including costs for validation and language expansion to Portuguese, Ukranian and Catalan (Swedich language has been changed to Ukrainian, due to today political interest), and related technical risks.
Evaluation of the commercial feasibility: we analyse the market, today trends, their figures and needs, as well as an analysis of potential competitors. Also a FTO analysis has been carried, and the regulatory and legal issues are analysed.
Financial feasibility and business plan include a sales forecast, EBITDA estimations, and market risks identification. With an initial estimation of 2M€ from Phase 2, indicates an ROI of 4.58. Critical risks (technical and commercial) are analysed.
The social impact also includes the potential best information for ALL our society, mitigating the danger of Fake news for our Democracy.