Project description
Cross-media analytics to bust fake news
Fake news has become a rising and concerning trend. Though fact checking services have emerged as a result, current solutions fail on many fronts. They are also extremely time consuming, relying on manual activities, focusing mainly on politics and political statements. TruthCheck offers an alternative approach, combining both existing and novel technologies. TruthCheck is set to be available to the public as a free version. Licenses are also being offered to private enterprises, government institutions and non-government agencies.
Objective
The phenomenon of fake news is as old as human’s ability to communicate. Recently, technology has made it easy to spread fake news with unprecedented speed towards the unprotected public, which has resulted in undesired external influence in European elections and referenda (Brexit, Catalonia).
Though a variety of fact checkers have arisen out of nowhere, current solutions fail on many aspects: they are primarily based on manual activities, focus mainly on politics and political statements and are highly country-/language specific. Due to the speed and sheer size of the Internet and Social Media platforms, manual defence against fake news is futile. Automated solutions are required involving automatic algorithms that quickly identify fake news and tag them as such, allowing Europeans to make educated, correct decisions. At SAIL LABS, we develop an alternative fact checker: TruthCheck. This combines available and novel technologies such as 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 on a semi-automatic basis. TruthCheck will be available as free version to the public, while licenses are offered to enterprises, NGOs and governmental institutions. In absence of a clear market leader we intend to take the opportunity to become first-comer in this segment, thereby targeting the fast-growing market of media analysis. Through this project, we intend to assess and develop the required commercial and technical work that it needs to ensure successful and swift market launch.
Fields of science
- social sciencesmedia and communicationsjournalism
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical policiescivil societynongovernmental organizations
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionselections
- social sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systemsdemocracy
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
1090 Wien
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.