Under the motto “What is the value of facts?”, international experts and fact checkers met at TechGate in Vienna in September for the third edition of The Future of Fact Checking. The Austria Press Agency (APA) organized the event in cooperation with several partners, including the Federal Ministry of Culture, the City of Vienna, and the Austrian National Bank.
In addition to traditional journalistic perspectives, the focus was on technological challenges and solutions, among other topics, with representatives from AIT playing important roles. Martin Boyer and Silvia Poletti stood out in particular, whose contributions impressively illustrated concrete approaches to supporting fact-checking through technical processes.
Martin Boyer, Thematic Coordinator for Data Science & AI, demonstrated how AI-based media forensics can detect manipulation in images, videos, and audio files. He emphasized the importance of transparent, explainable systems and close collaboration between humans and machines in order to effectively counteract deepfakes and disinformation.
Silvia Poletti, Research Engineer in the field of computer vision and explainable AI, presented methods for detecting visual fakes and methods for making AI decisions comprehensible. She emphasized that trust in AI-supported fact-checking tools can only be achieved through openness and integration into journalistic workflows.
Both experts referred to AIT contributions to European projects such as GADMO (gadmo.at) and defame Fakes (defamefakes.at), in which innovative tools for the automated detection and analysis of disinformation are being developed.
With their contributions, Boyer and Poletti made it clear that AIT's research in the field of digital safety and security is making a significant contribution to making fact-checking more efficient, transparent, and resilient to AI-based manipulation in the future.
Read the full german article here.