Researchers from UMONS at the heart of the fight against disinformation
Matei Mancas, a researcher within the Information, Signal, and Artificial Intelligence Service at UMONS, participated in the prestigious World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, a conference organized by the United Nations (UN). This summit brought together numerous international experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities of information societies.
During a session titled “Artificial Intelligence and Disinformation: Technical and Political Solutions” organized by the Permanent Mission of Belgium – Wallonia-Brussels in Geneva, the researcher presented the European research project AI4Debunk. Matei Mancas addressed the dangers of disinformation amplified by artificial intelligence. He highlighted the increased risks during election periods and conflicts and presented solutions to combat disinformation proposed by the AI4Debunk project.
AI4Debunk: Ensuring reliable communication and online exploration for citizens
Launched in January 2024 and funded by the European Union, the AI4Debunk project aims to combat online disinformation. Through the collaborative work of 13 partners from eight countries, including UMONS, this project is developing human-centered intelligence tools: a web plug-in, a collaborative platform, a smartphone application, and an augmented/virtual reality interface.
Matei Mancas highlighted how these tools can detect and counter fake news in real-time, thus contributing to more reliable information and a better-informed society.
“Artificial intelligence can truly help analyze content, fact-check, and monitor social networks,” explained Matei Mancas. “But many challenges remain, such as bias and transparency of the tools. AI cannot do everything alone. A combined approach with human expertise is needed. This is where AI4Debunk comes in, providing human-centered AI tools for reliable online navigation.”
This participation in WSIS illustrates UMONS’ commitment to researching technological and political solutions for a safer and more transparent digital world.
AI4Debunk is funded by the Horizon Europe program (Grant Agreement No. 101135757).
>>> More information about the AI4Debunk project here: https://ai4debunk.eu
>>> AI4Debunk project partners: University of Latvia (Latvia) – project coordinator, Euractiv.bg, Pilot4DEV, University of Mons (Belgium), Internews Ukraine (Ukraine), National Research Council of Italy, University of Florence (Italy), its affiliated entity – CNIT (Italy), Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Spain), DOTSOFT (Greece), University of Galway, F6S Innovation (Ireland), University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Innovative Power (Netherlands).