Google is working with a network of European fact-checkers on a first-of-its-kind fact-checking database ahead of the European elections.
ADVERTISEMENTGoogle is working with a network of European fact-checkers on a first-of-its-kind verification database ahead of the European elections.
The database, called Elections24Check, will be updated by members of the European Fact-Checking Network (EFCSN), a group of over 40 media organisations and fact-checking companies.
Among the organisations involved are France’s Agence-France Presse (AFP), Germany’s Correctiv and the Belarusian Investigative Centre. The EFCSN has said that within the effort, there are groups from "all almost EU countries and languages".
The database will collect and categorise political fact checks, disinformation debunks, prebunking articles, and reports on transnational trends.
Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, chair of the EFCSN, said in a statement that Elections24Check will be "an early detection system of online misinformation," for EU and non-EU countries alike.
Google announced on Thursday that it will contribute €1.5 million to the project and will have access to a new feature called the "fact check explorer" to fact-check images and text.
Google will also be training members of the coalition on how to see the context and timeline of an image to determine "when it was first indexed by Google and how it has been used since".
This new technology is "increasingly important" because of the rise of AI-generated images, according to a Google blog post.
This is the latest announcement from Google about how they plan to make reliable information available during the election.
Amid multiple major global elections this year, Google has blocked all election-related inquiries asked of Gemini, its artificial intelligence (AI) model "out of an abundance of caution".
The company also announced earlier this year a "prebunking campaign" of short video ads that will be translated into all EU languages and advertised on social media in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Poland. These will teach people to identify and resist manipulative content.
Prebunking is a method to preempt misinformation by teaching people how to identify and resist manipulative content, according to Google’s website.
