NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is set to take a major technological leap in its fight against misinformation and fake news with the launch of a fact-checking chatbot.
The Press Information Bureau (PIB) has already put in place an institutional mechanism as part of its Fact Check Unit (FCU) to ensure swift and coordinated responses to fake news and false claims.
According to Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot will also provide details to a query about a subject or a claim, which had been fact-checked in the past.
“We have got a fact-check chatbot made and tested. We will launch it after the final testing. As soon as you put a query, it will produce information, even if it has happened a year ago. The chatbot will also have a ‘search’ option,” said officials.
The ministry is simultaneously developing separate software to check the veracity of a video, to counter the Deepfake menace. It is at a preliminary stage.
“As soon as you put the video in that software, the related authentic video will appear… Many Deepfake videos about the Indian Army are being run by foreign people's handles, false claims are made while the original is about something else…To address this particular issue, we are working on software. It is to overcome the damage caused by the time taken to check the authenticity of a clip, fact check and put the correct information in the public domain because sometimes it takes a long time to fact check,” an official explained.
Buoyed by the response to PIB’s backgrounder, the ministry will soon start a ‘video backgrounder’. The backgrounder is an informational document that provides journalists and the public with in-depth information and context on specific government policies, programs, or achievements.
“Mainstream national media has been using our backgrounders and now we are trying to even further improve the backgrounders. At present, we reach out to about 24,000 individuals through various channels. We will soon start video backgrounders. To improve the quality of backgrounders, we have organised workshops for our officials. The workshops were conducted by senior journalists,” said Vaishnaw.
