Pretoria:The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has issued a call for partners to join forces in using technology to combat misinformation. This initiative comes as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve the landscape of information creation, sharing, and consumption.
According to South African Government News Agency, the increasing sophistication of AI-generated content, including videos, audio, and images, is making it challenging to discern authentic information from misleading or fabricated content. This issue is particularly concerning during election periods, where misinformation and disinformation can have significant impacts.
CSIR Acting Research Group Leader for Natural Language Processing and Principal AI Specialist Avi Moodley emphasized the need for a collaborative approach to tackle misinformation and fake news. Moodley highlighted the challenges posed by the sheer volume of content available, making it difficult for people to trust the information they receive. He noted the potential of AI to industrialize the spread of misinformation and the necessity for coordinated responses among organizations working in this field.
The CSIR is implementing a process to address these challenges during elections, starting with identifying keywords that shape electoral discourse and using natural language processing services to enrich collected data from social media. This data is then processed to detect misinformation, with findings shared via dashboards and public dissemination platforms.
Additionally, the CSIR has developed the Informed Fake News Advisor Project, which evaluates information against credible sources and provides indicators to identify potential misinformation. This technology is primarily aimed at supporting fact-checkers.
The CSIR is also working on audio search technology to address the challenges posed by South Africa's linguistic diversity and the limitations of converting audio content to text. This development aims to enhance the capability to search audio content efficiently, addressing the rise of multimodal content fueled by AI advancements.