• Divce witrh letters saying: fact/fake

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    28.09.2022

    “news-polygraph”: Funding by the BMBF

With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the research project “news-polygraph”, anchored in the Brain City Berlin, aims to identify manipulated media content. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) selected the regional alliance from among research institutions and companies for funding under the RUBIN program. The scientific partners of the project are the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) and the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin).

“Fake news”, false information placed in a targeted manner on the Internet, is also becoming an increasing problem for media professionals because it is not so easy to identify. This applies in particular to so-called Deepfakes –deceptively manipulated image, audio and video files. The research project “news-polygraph” aims to support the media industry in reliably, quickly and intuitively distinguishing real from fake information. The technology platform, which DFKI, IDMT and TU Berlin are currently developing with the support of five corporate partners, combines various software tools to make manipulations to photos, sound and text visible. In this way, a networked range of digital tools is being created for use against fake or out-of-context information. 

Up to 12 million Euro funding for 3 years

The further development of this fake news lie detector will be funded over the next three years by the BMBF through the RUBIN programme. As the Federal Ministry announced at the end of September, news-polygraph is one of a total of 15 regional entrepreneurial alliances for innovation selected for funding in the second RUBIN funding round. 53 alliances from all over Germany submitted a draft application in February. With RUBIN, the BMBF aims to improve regional competitiveness in Germany and lay the foundation for sustainable structural change through innovation. The alliances selected for funding will be supported over a three-year implementation phase with up to twelve million Euro each.

“Field test” at Deutsche Welle and rbb

Whether and how well news-polygraph has already been “taught” and is working is to be checked as part of a first pilot project. Deutsche Welle and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) are testing the developed prototype as application partners of the project in the journalistic field. Other potential areas of application are, for example, PR agencies, public institutions, insurance companies and investigative authorities.

News-polygraph is expected to start the official implementation phase in spring 2023. The five regional business partners of the research alliance are: Crowdee GmbH, delphai by AtomLeap GmbH, neurocat GmbH, transfermedia production services GmbH and Ubermetrics Technologies GmbH. (vdo)

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