AFCN announces in a webinar “Full Fact AI” tools in Arabic
April 2, 2024
The Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN) from ARIJ conducted a webinar on 2 April with the participation of +100 attendees via Zoom and +1K views on ARIJ’s Facebook page (Live) on the occasion of the International Fact-Checking Day, to launch Full Fact Fact-Checking AI tools in Arabic for the first time.
AFCN hosted in the webinar, Full Fact’s CEO Chris Morris, Full Fact’s Senior Product Manager Kate Wilkinson, and ARIJ’s Digital Transformation Consultant Khalid Waleed.
This launch comes after 22 Arab fact-checking organisations/initiatives from the AFCN community have had the opportunity to access and use for free these tools and training 100+ fact-checkers from these organisations/initiatives to use these tools in monitoring، identifying claims and accelerating their fact-checking process. Most of these organisations/initiatives used to adopt manual methods of monitoring before using FullFact tools.
Moderated by AFCN Manager, Saja Mortada, the 3 speakers presented the importance of incorporating AI into the fact-checking process today as dis/misinformation spreads widely. Morris emphasises this by stating: “Technology is progressing rapidly. This gives fact-checkers great challenges as well as new opportunities to exploit them in the interest of truth and manifest it”.
The speakers commented on the challenges they faced in arabizing the tools. ARIJ’s Digital Transformation Consultant Khalid Waleed stated that the tools would be developed thanks to the outputs of the 22 Arab fact-checking organisations/initiatives using it.
Wilkinson presented a live demo for the attendees on how to use the tool to monitor and identify claims from media organisations and social media accounts, and showcased all the features available in it, adding that Arab fact-checkers are the largest group to use these tools worldwide.
It is worth mentioning that this project is one of ARIJ’s AFCN projects, supported by the Google News Initiative (GNI), and it was officially announced during ARIJ16 annual Forum in Amman in December 2023.
