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Success Story Webinar: Image Deepfake Detection & Out-of-Context Media Verification   Our recent webinar, led by Product Owner Lisa Raithel, demonstrated how Gretchen AI can uncover image manipulations and detect decontextualized media. Lisa showed how deepfakes and misleading visuals influence public perception, and how our Gretchen AI dashboard can help verify authenticity in real time. The session offered hands-on insights into our current detection methods as well as an open discussion on future updates and improvements. Are you already a beta tester?  Then welcome to our Gretchen beta tester community!  We are continuously working on making Gretchen AI more comprehensive, intuitive, and productive. To do this, we rely on your feedback and appreciate new feature requests, questions, comments, and any inconsistencies you may have noticed. Please use the feedback button in the upper right corner of the dashboard. 

Celebrating Our Nomination for the Innovationspreis Berlin Brandenburg We’re honored to be listed among the nominees for the Innovationspreis Berlin Brandenburg, celebrating groundbreaking ideas and forward-thinking companies shaping the future of technology. This recognition highlights our mission at Gretchen AI – developing trustworthy, explainable AI solutions that help uncover deepfakes and decontextualized content across the digital landscape. Our goal is to make information more transparent and verifiable, empowering users and journalists alike to navigate today’s fast-moving media ecosystem with confidence. A special thank you goes to our long-term partner dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH and Sebastian Raabe for their collaboration and kind words. Our shared commitment to media verification and AI-driven transparency continues to drive innovation that bridges technology and journalism.   Learn more

Success Story Innovation in Motion: Berlin AI Square   As part of her summer tour, Berlin’s Senator for Economic Affairs, Franziska Giffey, has visited the Berlin AI Square, where leading AI research institutions – including BIFOLD, DFKI, Fraunhofer HHI, PTB and others – showcased their collaboration and collective strength. Together, they form one of Europe’s most dynamic AI clusters.  We at Gretchen AI were thrilled to give Senator Giffey a personal demo of our Gretchen AI dashboard, highlighting how our technology contributes to trustworthy AI and real-world applications. Being part of this vibrant AI cluster is an exciting opportunity to help shape the future of AI in Berlin! We’re In : MediaTech Hub Accelerator Investment Readiness Program   We’re thrilled to announce that Gretchen AI has been accepted into this year’s MediaTech Hub Accelerator Investment Readiness Program! As part of the program, we’ll receive expert mentorship from industry leaders and guidance to prepare for our next funding round. As part of the program, we participated in the MediaTech Hub Conference 2025 at the MediaTech Hub Space at UFA and presented our work during the Demo Day, where we were honored to win the €5,000 prize for our presentation! This accelerator will help us refine our technology, strengthen our business model, and advance our mission: developing explainable deepfake detection and building trustworthy AI for media applications.We can’t wait to take the next steps with the MediaTech Hub team and our cohort! Panel: Generative AI for SMEs   At the Digital Technologies Forum in Berlin, Tim Polzehl joined a panel discussing the Federal Ministry’s new funding program “Generative AI for SMEs”. Together with Tina Klüwer (Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space), Michael May, and Jörg Bienert, he explored how generative AI can strengthen innovation, efficiency, and competitiveness in small and medium-sized enterprises. The discussion highlighted both the opportunities and responsibilities of developing ethical, transparent, and effective AI, showing that Europe’s AI ecosystem is moving from research to real-world impact.  Gretchen AI Meets the NRW Inquiry Commission   We were proud to join the conversation during the recent visit of the AI Inquiry Commmission of the NRW State Parliament at DFKI Berlin. As a DFKI spin-off, Gretchen AI had the chance to share our perspective on AI’s role in shaping the future of our economy and society. It was a great opportunity to engage directly with policymakers like Franziska Müller-Rech and Björn Franken and to reflect on how AI can serve public trust in the age of synthetic media. Gretchen AI Wins Cybersecurity Pitch at the French-German Tech Lab @ VivaTech 2025!   We’re beyond excited to share that Gretchen AI has won first place in the Cybersecurity Pitch Competition at the French-German Tech Lab (FGTL25) during VivaTech 2025 – Europe’s leading event for technology and innovation! Our co-founder Daniel Röder took the stage to present our bold vision for using AI to tackle disinformation , demonstrating how false narratives can erode trust, damage reputations, and cause significant financial impact. His pitch showcased Gretchen’s AI agents as a proactive defense – detecting, tracking, and neutralizing manipulated content before it spreads. Winning this award is a proud milestone in our journey to make digital spaces more trustworthy and transparent . It also reflects the growing recognition of startups working on tech-for-good   using AI not just for efficiency, but for integrity and impact . A heartfelt thank you to the FGTL25 jury , VivaTech organizers , and all the inspiring European startups driving innovation for a safer digital future!

Study BiCrossMamba-ST Speech Deepfake Detection with Bidirectional Mamba Spectro-Temporal Cross-Attention. by Yassine El Kheir Voice synthesis technology has reached a point where AI can create convincing imitations of anyone’s voice from just a few minutes of audio. This poses serious risks to:  Banking systems that rely on voice authentication Legal proceedings where audio evidence is crucial Personal security against impersonation attacks and many more Traditional detection methods are struggling to keep pace with these rapidly evolving deepfake techniques. Yassine El Kheir (I will link his profile in the name) and other researchers (should I include names) from the Speech and Language Technology, DFKI, Germany and Technical University of Berlin have developed BiCrossMamba-ST, a novel detection system that outperforms existing methods by substantial margins. The breakthrough lies in its dual-perspective analysis: By processing spectral sub-bands and temporal intervals separately and then integrating their representations, BiCrossMamba-ST effectively captures the subtle cues of synthetic speech. The performance improvements are striking:  28.2% fewer parameters while maintaining superior accuracy 67.74% and 26.3% improvement over other state-of-the-art models like AASIST on the ASVspoof19 and ASVspoofDF21 benchmark datasets, respectively and then attach paper (link or PDF)

Success Story Advancing to Phase 2 of the SPRIND Funken Challenge Gretchen AI selected among top teams developing real-time deepfake detection technology We’re thrilled to share that Gretchen AI has been selected for Phase 2 of the SPRIN-D ‘s Funken Challenge, a prestigious innovation competition dedicated to combating image-based deepfakes. This challenge represents a significant opportunity to address one of the most pressing issues in digital media today. Our task is to develop a robust prototype capable of detecting and preventing deepfakes in real-time across diverse digital platforms, including social media networks, news portals, and video conferencing systems. What sets our approach apart is our AI’s ability to continuously adapt to emerging manipulation techniques. As deepfake technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, our system is designed to evolve alongside these threats, ensuring long-term effectiveness. We’ve also prioritized seamless integration with existing digital infrastructures, understanding that practical implementation is just as crucial as technical capability. The competition culminates in November 2025 with the final jury round, where the most promising deepfake defense prototype will be selected. We’re honored to advance to this stage and grateful for SPRIN-D’s continued support throughout this process. We’re also excited to be competing alongside other exceptional teams. The caliber of innovation in this competition pushes us to deliver our best work.

Success Story Gretchen AI Wins Cybersecurity Pitch at VivaTech 2025 Gretchen AI has won the Cybersecurity Pitch at the French-German Tech Lab #FGTL25 @ VivaTech 2025! Our co-founder, Daniel Röder, took the stage to share our bold vision for using AI to tackle disinformation and we’re beyond excited to announce that Gretchen AI took home first place in the cybersecurity pitch competition! We were honored to stand alongside some of Europe’s most forward-thinking startups, all working to harness technology for the public good. This recognition marks a pivotal moment in our journey, validating the impact we’re making in the tech-for-good space. His pitch demonstrated how pervasive—and costly—disinformation has become in today’s AI-driven landscape, jeopardizing public trust and eroding corporate value. He walked the audience through real-world examples of reputational and financial damage, then showcased Gretchen’s AI agents as a proactive, real-time shield that detects, tracks, and neutralizes false narratives before they can take hold. Being part of this exceptional cohort of European startups has been truly inspiring. The diversity of solutions represented spanning everything from platform integrity to data privacy showcases the breadth of challenges our generation of founders is tackling. Companies like ENTRYZERO, InputLab, and Detesia are proof that the future of technology lies in purposeful innovation, and we’re proud to be contributing to this movement alongside such dedicated teams. This recognition from FGTL and Viva Technology is more than a trophy. It’s a signal that the fight against digital deception is being taken seriously and that startups like Gretchen AI have a critical role to play. We’re deeply grateful to the FGTL25 jury, the organizers at VivaTech, and the cross-border ecosystem that supports deep-tech startups working on hard problems that matter.