How the "Check first. Vote smart." alliance can help safeguard elections and strengthen democracy!
1. The problem
Artificially generated images, voices, and videos are creating their own realities. Especially during election periods, they can be used to deliberately influence public opinion—and thereby endanger our democracy. In the rapid cycles of social media, citizens are confronted with a flood of half-truths and attempts at foreign manipulation.
2. The initiative
A broad alliance of academia, business, startups, and civil society organizations is coordinating the effort, including partners such as dpa, DFKI, and TU Berlin. At its core is a smart combination of human expertise and cutting-edge AI, designed to enable all voters, free of charge and ahead of elections, to carry out background checks and media verification on questionable content—images, videos, and related claims.
3. How it works
With just two clicks, voters can forward questionable images and videos from TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms directly to the AI software, which checks them for authenticity. If the results are inconclusive, human experts step in to review them.
4. The software
Developed and validated through academic research, the AI detects more than 80 types of manipulation and deepfakes, analyzes sources and metadata, identifies distorted or out-of-context representations, and automatically searches the internet for reliable evidence and counter-narratives.
The result
A transparent, fact-based, and verifiable analysis of images and videos.
The AI itself does not take any political stance; instead, it provides a neutral and reliable foundation that allows everyone to form their own informed opinion.
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