The second webinar, at the request of the European Parliament, delved into the use of technology in protecting elections against AI manipulations at the request of the European Parliament. The online event, held on 12 April 2024, attracted around 500 participants from the institution, demonstrating a significant level of concern regarding the threat of deepfakes.
Denis Teyssou showcased the latest innovative digital tools as well as some other detectors designed to analyse AI-manipulated content. We highlighted recent case studies where technology had successfully detected and mitigated disinformation targeting politicians and public figures. This webinar underscored the importance of technological awareness to anticipate any possible disinformation campaign using AI manipulation techniques.
The third and final webinar of this series, held on 23 May 2024, provided an advanced EDMO training on AI manipulation detection tools integrated into the InVID-WeVerify plug-in, now supported and enhanced further by vera.ai.
Denis Teyssou provided a 90 minute training on the latest features integrated into the plug-in as beta tools reserved for fact-checkers, journalists and researchers tackling disinformation.
It included voice cloning detection, synthetic image detection and deepfake (mainly face swapping) detection. Some 50 European fact-checkers attended the workshop and were all granted access to the new beta tools.
In conclusion, participation in these webinars was a testament to the vera.ai team's commitment to empowering fact-checkers and civil society to protect democratic processes. Through these educational and collaborative efforts, we contributed to raise awareness about AI manipulations and the tools available to counter them. The knowledge and skills imparted during the sessions gathered very positive feedback and helped us to align the features that are being developed and provided further to many different "real life" use cases.
Author: Denis Teyssou (AFP)
Editor: Jochen Spangenberg (DW)