Published on February 1, 2024
Published in GeekWire
By Todd Bishop
A new nonprofit, nonpartisan technology organization called TrueMedia is developing an AI-powered tool to detect deepfake videos, photos, and audio, aiming to combat political disinformation in the leadup to the 2024 elections.
Founded and led by Oren Etzioni, University of Washington professor and former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, the Seattle-based group is backed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp through his Camp.org nonprofit foundation.
The plan, in essence, is to use AI to fight AI.
“Disinformation, transmitted virally over social networks, has emerged as the Achilles heel of democracy in the 21st Century,” the group said in its announcement Wednesday morning, predicting “a tsunami of disinformation” in the 2024 election due to a sharp decline in the cost of using AI to create deceptive media.
TrueMedia plans to release a free, web-based tool in the first quarter of this year that combines advances from TrueMedia with existing deepfake detection tools in areas including computer vision and audio analysis. It will be available initially for use by journalists, fact-checkers, and online influencers before broader public release later in the year.
The group is far from the first to take on this challenge, but Etzioni said he believes TrueMedia will be in a strong position to address it.
Continuing reading here
The 2024 election will have significant repercussions for urban dwellers and environments. Leading efforts to preventing disinformation from influencing the presidential race is University of Washington professor Oren Etzoni, leader of the new nonprofit TrueMedia.