Facebook uses AI to help people support each other

Facebook has deployed an AI system which matches people needing support with local heroes offering it.“United we stand, divided we fall” is a clichéd saying—but tackling a pandemic is a collective effort. While we’ve all seen people taking selfish actions, they’ve been more than balanced out by those helping to support their communities.

Facebook has been its usual blessing and a curse during the pandemic. On the one hand, it's helped people to stay connected and...

2 October 2020 | Facebook

Facebook pledges crackdown on deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election

facebook deepfakes ai usa presidential elections 2020 artificial intelligence social media

Facebook has pledged to crack down on misleading deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election later this year.

Voter manipulation is a concern for any functioning democracy and deepfakes provide a whole new challenge for social media platforms.

A fake video of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, went viral last year after purportedly showing her slurring her words as if she was intoxicated. The clip shows how even a relatively...

8 January 2020 | Deepfakes

Mozilla shares YouTube horror tales in campaign for responsible algorithms

mozilla youtube algorithms horror stories campaign ai artificial intelligence recommendations

Mozilla has launched a campaign for more responsible algorithms by sharing YouTube horror tales crowdsourced from social media.

We've all scratched our heads at some recommendations when using online platforms. Just yesterday, Verge reporter Megan Farokhmanesh shared how her Instagram recommendations have been plagued by some rather bizarre CGI images of teeth.

Farokhmanesh's account is of a recommendation algorithm going rogue in a relatively harmless and amusing way,...

15 October 2019 | Ethics

Ofcom: AI is not ready to effectively moderate online content ‘for the foreseeable future’

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Ofcom and Cambridge Consultants have teamed up on a report examining the effectiveness of AI-powered online content moderation.

Governments around the world have put increasing amounts of pressure on social networks and communication services to take responsibility for content posted on them. Society itself is becoming more aware of the dangers following live-streamed terror attacks, cyberbullying, political manipulation, and more.

With some platforms having billions...

22 July 2019 | Social Media

Instagram uses ‘AI intervention’ to help counter bullying

Media sharing platform Instagram is launching an ‘AI intervention’ system designed to help counter the scourge of cyberbullying.

With 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram every day, manual content moderation is impossible. Inappropriate content must be reported for moderation today, and the psychological damage it can do to human moderators is well-documented.

AI has long been herald as a means to automate the moderation process, but today it still...

10 July 2019 | Social Media

Facebook outage gave a glimpse at how its AI analyses images

Facebook’s issue displaying images yesterday gave users an interesting look at how the social media giant’s AI analyses their uploads.

An outage yesterday meant Facebook users were unable to see uploaded images, providing a welcome respite from the usual mix of food and baby photos. In their place, however, was some interesting text.

Text in the placeholder where the image should have been displayed showed how Facebook’s AI automatically tagged the...

4 July 2019 | Facebook

Twitter’s latest acquisition tackles fake news using AI

Twitter has acquired Fabula AI, a UK-based startup employing artificial intelligence for tackling fake news.

Fake news is among the most difficult challenges of our time. Aside from real stories often being called it by certain politicians, actual fake news is used to coerce people into making decisions.

Governments have been putting increasing pressure on sites like Twitter and Facebook to take more responsibility for the content shared on them.

With billions...

4 June 2019 | Social Media

Trump speech ‘DeepFake’ shows a present AI threat

A so-called ‘DeepFake’ video of a Trump speech was broadcast on a Fox-owned Seattle TV network, showing a very present AI threat.

The station, Q13, broadcasted a doctored Trump speech in which he somehow appeared even more orange and pulled amusing faces.

You can see a side-by-side comparison with the original below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZLs11uSg-A&feature=youtu.be

Following the broadcast, a Q13 employee was sacked. It’s unclear if...

14 January 2019 | Deep Learning