Fake News in the Tension Arc of Artificial Intelligence

This chapter presents the defalsif-AI project (Detection of Disinformation via Artificial Intelligence). In particular, defalsif-AI focuses on politically motivated disinformation and fake news, which weaken or threaten political as well as state institutions, e.g., protection against engineered social media attacks that attempt to manipulate the electoral processes. A principal focus of this research is in enhancing the comprehensibility and interpretability of the results for non-experts in the forensic/technical field. In general, it is a multidisciplinary project of computer science, law and social sciences that is funded by the Austrian security research programme KIRAS of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism. The primary project outcome is a proof-of-concept implemented platform that can operate on a variety of sources, including the surface web and social media. The defalsif-AI project follows a phase model of a quantitative-qualitative mixed-method approach to not only survey the status quo of the handling of news and fake news and the willingness of journalists and policymakers to work with new technologies but also concerning perceived current (ethical) risks during the process of building an AI-driven solution towards a safe and secure digital infrastructure in the battle against misinformation, fake news, and their impact on democracy.