We live in an era in which the truth seems to be eroded by a phenomenon that is very sneaky how pervasive: the fake news. This information is deliberately false or distorted, spread with the intent to manipulate public opinion, to instill doubt, or distort reality, they represent a serious threat to the health of our democracies, and for the cohesion of our society. In this crucial battle to preserve the integrity of the information, the artificial intelligence (AI) is revealed to be the protagonist from the contours ambiguous: a technology that, in the wrong hands, can become a powerful weapon for the misinformation, but, at the same time, it offers tools just as powerful to combat this pitfall.
The weapons of the IA
The face is the most obscure of the role of IA in the dissemination of fake news emerges from his ability to create false information in an extraordinarily realistic. Consider, for example, with the proliferation of deepfake audio, video, and handled in such a way so refined as to be almost indistinguishable from the originals. Sophisticated Software, powered by machine learning, can superimpose a person's face to another in a movie, or imitate this voice with a precision awesome. The result is a deception from perfect, which can be used to defame, disparage, or manipulate public opinion.
But the creativity of AI in forge, the deception does not stop deepfake. The language models advanced, those that allow the chatbot to converse with us in a way that is so natural, they can be exploited to generate all sorts of texts: newspaper articles, invented to sound plant, social media post loads of hate and lies, press releases fake fall the shares on the stock exchange. The capacity of these IA to simulate the human language is such as to make them the perfect tools for spreading misinformation on a large scale, bypassing easily, filters and controls to the traditional.
The counters using the
Fortunately, the artificial intelligence is not a weapon in one direction only. The same technology that is used to create fake news can be used to smascherarle. Researchers around the world are developing systems IA able to recognize the distinctive signals of the content that is false, by analyzing the language, the writing style, the images and the video in search of anomalies.
These systems anti-fake news can operate on multiple fronts. Some specialize in the analysis of the text, looking for logical inconsistencies, errors of syntax or the use of a language that is overly emotional or dramatic. Others focus on the verification of images and videos, searching for traces of digital manipulation or inconsistencies that reveal the falsity of the content. Still others focus on the analysis of sources, trying to identify web sites or social media profiles that spread systematically misinformed.
However, the battle between the AI that creates fake news, and the AI that unmasks looks like a sort of arms race, in which the two parties are constantly trying to outdo each other. The creators of fake news refine their techniques, and systems developers the anti-fake news have to keep up, constantly improving the ability of these software to detect the deception. What emerges in this scenario, a new and complex dilemma: the difficulty for AI to understand if another IA has written or created the content, which opens up a horizon of new challenges for the future.
Weapons of defense available to the individual
In this war information, the technology is not the only protagonist. Individual citizens have a crucial role to play, and luckily there are tools and strategies that can help us to defend ourselves against fake news.
Fact-checking or verification of information, is the first line of defense. To do this effectively, we do not need sophisticated software, but a little critical of some things simple. We must always question the information that come to us, asking us who wrote them, where they are coming from and if they are confirmed by the other reliable sources. Prudence and caution, in short, they are our best allies.
Fortunately, there are tools that can help us in this battle. Some websites specialize in fact-checking provide in-depth analysis of news controversial, exposing falsehoods, and providing trusted sources. There are also browser extensions that signal when a website is potentially unreliable, or that highlight the sensationalized headlines.
But the problem is that these tools are to be used with judgment, taking into account that they are not infallible and that they can't replace our critical thinking. The final responsibility to discern truth from falsehood remains in the hands of every single citizen.
Practical examples
History is full of examples where the fake news have played a role, influencing public opinion, fueling the wars of manipulating the results of the elections. The techniques of disinformation used in the past (flyers, posters, propaganda) have evolved and amplified enormously in the digital age, reaching a speed and a diffusion unprecedented thanks to social media and instant messaging networks.
The most recent examples, from political elections to the referendum, by military conflicts, pandemics and health, we demonstrate how the fake news can influence our lives, our choices, our fears. Can I feed the hate, divide communities, undermine trust in institutions, eroding the sense of a shared reality.
The fight against fake news, therefore, is not a simple battle for the veracity of the facts. It is a struggle to preserve our ability to make informed decisions to protect our democracy, to defend the value of truth in a world that is ever more complex and interconnected.
