Two new AI fact-checking tools, Dubawa Chatbot and Dubawa Audio were launched by Dubawa the fact-checking arm of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) on Monday.
The AI tools created to combat misinformation were launched and demoed by the head of Innovation at the CJID, Monsur Hussain, at the organisation’s Journalism, Digital Tech and AI dialogue in Abuja.
According to Monsur Hussain, the Dubawa Chatbot is developed to give accurate and timely responses to claims or questions on WhatsApp. The Dubawa Audio platform can monitor radio programmes, listen to them and extract verifiable claims from them for fact-checking.
The Chatbot which is now live on WhatsApp uses access to real-time internet data and published fact-checks and news stories from trusted and ranked platforms to verify claims, unlike other AI tools like the ChatGPT and MetaAI.
Dubawa Audio offers a platform to help fact-check claims made in audio content, usually in radio programs or TV or social media video content that can be converted to audio. The platform can monitor radio programs, listen to the audio and extract verifiable claims made in it for fact-checking purposes.
“Radio is a mass source of information in Africa. A lot of people listen to the radio daily. But then due to the transient nature of the radio, there’s really no way to keep track of everything that’s going on the radio,” Hussain said during the launch.
This platform can help hold people accountable for many unverifiable claims made on radio that reach millions of listeners.
The undocumented nature of audio claims makes it difficult to track for verification thus making the Dubawa Audio platform a very important tool for journalists.
There are two levels of use for the audio platform, unlike the Chatbot which is accessible to all. The first allows anybody with a downloaded audio file of a program to upload it on the platform to extract verifiable claims. The second, which is paid, offers admin access that allows users to program the tool to regularly monitor a particular program, download the audio, and extract verifiable claims automatically.
Other tools launched in Nigeria to fight misinformation.
The two new tools join a list of existing verification tools and platforms already created by journalists and platforms in Nigeria.
ChatVE which was also demoed at the event was developed by Isreal Olatunji a journalist and Data Scientist for verification of false information and claims on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) Instagram and Facebook.
ChatVE is a fact-checking AI chatbot that can be tagged in a social media post to verify a posted information/claim and it will reply to the post with a fact-check result. Aside from providing fact-checks, it also ensures accountability by replying to the original false information post which in some cases has resulted in the originator taking it down
According to Olatunji, aside from the offering of Artificial intelligence capability to use a large repository of information to verify information ChatVE employs the Human In The Loop(HITL) approach where the human fact-checkers are involved in the workflow to ensure accuracy and ethics.
Factcheck Africa’s MyAIFactchecker is another AI tool helping to fight misinformation in Nigeria. Built by FactCheck Africa, a project of the Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative, the tool allows people to easily verify the authenticity of a particular news or information on the online platform.
It uses a combination of Google’s fact-checking API with the GPT-4 model to harness the power of artificial intelligence and reputable news sources to verify claims and provide fact-check analysis.
Users can type in their claims to be verified on the platform and get results within seconds based on credible fact-check sources.
Taking verified information to the root of falsehoods.
Each of these new and already existing tools for fighting misinformation in Nigeria is deployed strategically in the space where most of the misinformation thrives.
The Dubawa Chatbot on WhatsApp, CHatVE predominantly on X and other social media and the MyAIFactcheker on the internet where most of the originates and circulates. This offers an effective and agile solution to the problem of polluted information space in Nigeria.
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