The AI-CODE Project: Empowering Media Professionals with Generative AI against Disinformation
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Brussels, Belgium – [04/11/2024] – The AI-CODE consortium is excited to announce the AI-CODE Project which started in December 2023 a groundbreaking initiative aimed at enhancing fact-checking activities and combating disinformation across Europe. This 3-year project will leverage advanced artificial intelligence technologies to empower journalists and media practitioners in their fight against misinformation.
Project Overview
The AI-CODE Project will focus on developing innovative tools and methodologies that enable the monitoring, detection, and response to disinformation in real-time. By harnessing AI capabilities, the project aims to:
- Contrast Disinformation: Implement multichannel, multilingual, and multimodal approaches to track misinformation across various platforms.
- Enhance Understanding of new online spaces: follow the evolution of next-generation decentralised and immersive social-media in the context of rapid development of Generative AI and how such a combination can impact disinformation;
- Empower Journalists: Provide training and resources for journalists to effectively identify and counter disinformation narratives.
- Foster Collaboration: Create a network of media professionals, researchers, and policymakers dedicated to promoting reliable information.
Objectives
- Achieve a comprehensive understanding of how disinformation spreads on next-generation social media; how trustworthy, advanced AI methods (ML, NLP, computer vision) counter AI-generated content; ways to adapt these AI methods for verifying information and producing trusted content within the AI-CODE services proposed.
- Develop a set of services: content-driven services focused on detecting disinformation, assessing trust and credibility, and annotating multimedia content; user-driven services that offer interactive coaching on generative AI, enhance transparency through AI model cards, and provide a personal companion to help users recognize and understand disinformation.
- Coach media professionals to understand the workings of virtual environments and generative AI—including their benefits, limitations, and risks—aims to prepare them to use these tools effectively and credibly for trusted information production, while also educating junior or inexperienced journalists to critically assess and interpret arguments in disinformation-related narratives.
Key Activities
- First, the project aims to identify, analyse, and understand future developments of next-generation social media in the context of rapid development of generative Artificial Intelligence and how such a combination can impact the (dis)information space.
- Second, the project aims to provide media professionals with novel AI-based services to coach them how to work in emerging digital environments and how to utilise generative AI effectively and credibly, to detect new forms of content manipulation, as well as to assess the reputation and credibility of sources and their content.
Partners
- ds tech srl
- Live tech srl (affiliated entity)
- Ethniko kentro erevnas kai technologikis anapty
- Fondazione bruno kessler
- Universidad politecnica de madrid
- Athens technology center anonymi viomichaniki
- Deutsche welle
- Kempelenov institut inteligentnychtechnologii
- Debunk eu
- European institute for participatory media ev
- Stichting radboud universiteit
- Euractiv media b.v.
- Centre for european policy studies
- Sistemi Nalder
- Università della Calabria
Conclusion
The AI-CODE Project is poised to make a substantial impact on the media landscape in Europe by enhancing fact-checking capabilities and empowering journalists. As misinformation continues to pose challenges to democratic discourse, this initiative will play a crucial role in ensuring that reliable information prevails. Or as Tom Stoppard stated:
“I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.” Tom Stoppard, The New York Times on December 15, 1996.
For more information about the AI-CODE Project or to get involved, go to https://aicode-project.eu or subscribe to the newsletter here.
The AI-CODE project is funded by the HORIZON Europe Programme of the European union.