With India preparing for its general elections, Google has announced a partnership to combat misinformation. The tech giant has partnered with Shakti, an Indian fact-checking collective, to help detect online misinformation, including deepfakes.
Shakti comprises of major Indian news outlets along with independent fact-checkers. It aims to create a common repository that news publishers can use to tackle the challenges of misinformation at scale.
Starting from Friday till the conclusion of the General Elections in India, the project intends to focus on connecting independent fact checkers and Indian language publishers, giving them a collaborative platform to share fact checks, research resources and alerts on elections-related viral misinformation and deepfakes, saving time.
“Amidst a complex information landscape, with the elections round the corner, the Collective is a crucial intervention towards building a robust fact-checking ecosystem to safeguard the democratic processes,” Syed Nazakat, founder and CEO, DataLEADS, said.
Shakti will be driven by DataLEADS, in collaboration with the Misinformation Combat Alliance, The Quint, VishvasNews, Boom, Factly, and Newschecker, with support from the Google News Initiative.
Additionally, the project will provide news organisations and fact-checkers training in advanced fact-checking methodologies, deepfake detection, and the Google tools like the Fact Check Explorer, to streamline verification processes. The Fact-Checking collective will continue to onboard new partners and scale the effort to reach most parts of the country, prioritising publishers producing original news in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and Marathi.
“In an era where digital information flows faster than ever, the need to empower people with trustworthy and credible information has never been more critical. The strategic partnership of MCA with the Google News Initiative and DataLEADS will empower different demographics, helping individuals with credible and fact-checked information at the grassroots level, so that they can make the most informed choices during the elections and beyond. MCA’s fact-checking members aim to debilitate and disarm the agents of disinformation by using a combination of high-integrity journalism and useful technologies against emerging threats to democracy,” Bharat Gupta, president, Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA), and CEO, Jagran New Media, said.
The fact checking collective expands our ongoing efforts such as the GNI India Training Network, PollCheck, Data Accelerator and Data Dialogue, through which, since 2018, we have supported the training of 65,000+ journalists, media educators and journalism students in 15+ languages, and empowered them with digital tools and skills needed to find, verify, and tell engaging stories while tackling the ever-evolving risk of misinformation.
Furthermore, Google and YouTube launched the $13.2 million Global Fact Check Fund which would help enhance the capabilities of local and regional media organisations in producing fact-checking content.