After 3 years of research and development of AI-based fact-checking tools, both for and with media professionals, the Horizon Europe project veraAI is coming to an end on 31 October - with the EBU's part ending today on 14 September.
The EBU contributed to the project through a number of activities – most of them in close collaboration with our dear colleagues at Deutsche Welle – including participatory design workshops with Members and other media professionals to determine user needs and design requirements, followed by evaluation activities together with users; development of algorithms for audience and authorship estimations; communication on the project's progress through our channels including the tech-i app; a series of webinars about the research and science behind the project (more information about this here and here); methodology and communication training for consortium partners; a series of training workshops for Members and a catalogue of video tutorials; a report on the potential of C2PA and veraAI tools; a handbook on the legal and ethical obligations to developers and deployers of AI-based fact-checking tools; as well as various presentations and demos at EBU events such as the AI Summit, DTS, PTS, and the EBU zone at IBC.
Get the veraAI tools for your organisation!
You might be wondering: how can my team and I access the verification tools produced by the project in order to support our fact-checking and journalistic work?
A number of veraAI tools are now available through the following platforms (besides a few remaining standalone versions which will be integrated into these platforms in the near future):
- Verification Plugin (VP): A free toolbox of verification tools for text, audio and video as a Chrome browser extension, aimed at journalists, fact-checkers and human rights defenders but also open to the public.
- Truly Media platform (TM): A platform for collaborative work among verification professionals that allows them to aggregate information from the web, organize them into collections, and analyse them with the help of integrated third party verification tools.
You can install the Verification Plugin on your browser using this link. For the Truly Media platform, please visit this page to fill in an interest form (bottom of the page) and you'll be guided through the registration process. You can also request a demo here.
The tools currently integrated into these platforms, and those available as standalones, are the following – with more integrations underway:
Synthetic media detectors
- Synthetic Image Detector: A detector that provides the likelihood of an image being AI-generated (VP+TM).
- Synthetic Audio Detector: A detector that provides the likelihood of parts of an audio file containing synthetic speech (TM).
- Machine-Generated Text (MGT) Detector: A detector for potentially machine-generated text, as a detailed breakdown of various likelihood for each portions of text (as part of the VP 'Assistant'), and as an overall likelihood (WP+TM).
- Geolocalizer (VP): A tool that extracts visual clues from an image to estimate its geographical location.
- Image Forensic AI Filters (VP): A tool that detect alterations in manipulated images.
- Deepfake Video Detector (VP): A tool that returns the probability that a video contains AI manipulated faces (face swapping and face reenactment).
Analytical support
- Database of Known Fakes: A searcheable database of already reviewed claims from trustworthy fact-checking and news organisations (standalone).
- Credibility Signals: A text analyser indicating the use of persuasion techniques in a text, with levels of analytical confidence (VP as part of the 'Assistant', together with the MGT detector).
- Coordinated Sharing Detection Service: A coordinated sharing network analysis tool to explore the spread and behaviour of disinformation campaigns on social media (standalone).
- Keyframe Selection and Enhancement Service: A tool providing main relevant keyframes and enhanced faces and text from a video, for accelerated video analysis work (standalone and TM).
An up-to-date list will be made available and regularly updated on the project website next month.
Learn how to use some of these tools with this video tutorial series!
For more information about tools availability and access, please contact Hans Hoffmann (EBU Technology & Innovation) and/or the veraAI project lead.
We wish to thank EBU Members and other project participants for their valuable contributions to the project, and we hope you will find these services useful. They were made for you!
The veraAI project is co-financed by the European Union, Horizon Europe programme, Grant Agreement No 101070093, with additional funding from Innovate UK grant No 10039055 and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract No 22.00245.