How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Help US Detect Misinformation

Photo by Shopify Partners from Burst

In the 21st century, misinformation spreads like wildfire. We have all experienced it. Misinformation spread in the past very slowly through newspapers, reporters. But, in this digital era, it spreads in the blink of an eye through social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Scrolling through social media, we notice eye-catching posts, news that can influence and create confusion. From fake health tips to skewed political stories, the effects are huge. Because of the misleading information, people panic sometimes and make wrong decisions. Fortunately, we have a powerful detection technology which is artificial intelligence (AI) that can help us tackle this problem.

Social media sites are a blessing. Nowadays, they are also a curse.They connect us but spread misinformation. There have been several cases in the past few months which are increasing rapidly day by day. Recently, misinformation about new COVID booster guidance in Florida has been spread. In the past, during the COVID-19 pandemic, false claims about vaccine side effects spread quickly, causing hesitation and confusion among millions. A large number of people shared posts, stories, and created videos without fact-checking. Instead, people panicked and refused to take the vaccines. As a result, vaccination rates were lower in some communities.

Also, During the 2020 United States presidential election, fake news, rigged ballots in the election, spread so fast through social media that the public raised questions about the voting process and became frustrated, thinking of how their trust had been undermined. The public was tense, upset, and angry because of the rigged ballot rumors in a democratic country. If AI systems can analyze vast amounts of data to identify false claims so quickly, it will be helpful for human society. There is good news that social sites like Facebook and Twitter use this technology to flag misleading content to make a better society, but we have to do more. To solve this issue, Google has developed a Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC) tool that can detect fake news articles by analyzing writing styles and content sources. AI tools like FactCheck.org’s AI assistant provide real-time information about the accuracy of online claims. This can prevent the spread of misinformation and empower people to be more careful when they evaluate the information.

However, there are challenges in deploying AI because it can misidentify content. As an example, a newspaper, The Vindicator, posted on Facebook about the US Declaration of Independence which was labeled hate speech by Facebook bots. It happened because the AI system failed to understand historical language, complexity of human language. There was also a notable case, Videos of the Christchurch Terrorist Attack, where the videos were unchecked and not classified by the automated AI tools of Facebook and Instagram after 36 days of the incident. The content creators were so clever that they uploaded videos by slicing the original 17-minute videos and trimming them down so that AI tools could not detect and flag the content.

If we want to prevent the spreading of misinformation, we have to work together for the development of AI systems. Firstly, tech companies, researchers, scientists and the government should come forward to tackle this problem of the digital era. Secondly, transparency plays a significant role in fighting the spread of fake news. Twitter started labeling misleading tweets in 2020 to provide authentic information which became trustworthy day by day. Finally, we can organize media literacy programs like Google News Initiative to teach students, educators, social activists, and content creators so that they can identify misinformation themselves. We have to provide them with techniques and the sources of the powerful tools to detect fake news. Overall, without working together, we cannot make a meaningful change in this important issue.

AI is an advanced solution to classify misinformation, but it is not fixed. We all must work together to develop more advanced AI technologies so AI can quickly differentiate between real and fake news before spreading. By educating others, we can make a responsible digital society, so people can understand facts and stay away from misinformation, which is welfare for the entire society