Tech
Indian Media Leverages Blockchain to Verify Election News
Last Updated: April 2, 2024 1:13am EDT | 2 minute read
A Taiwanese blockchain technology company is collaborating with journalists check the facts about the upcoming elections in India in a battle against digital deception.
The Numbers Protocol claims to have used the same approach during the 2020 US presidential election and the January 2024 Taiwan presidential election.
Ahead of India’s general elections starting on April 19, a collaborative effort will see partner media outlets and photojournalists capture content on the spot. This content will then be uploaded to a blockchain platform using the Numbers protocol suite of tools, specifically Capture Cam and Capture Dashboard.
These tools aim to improve the credibility of captured digital media by detecting potential manipulation attempts through artificial intelligence.
In addition to professional journalists, Numbers Protocol invited civil society organizations to contribute using the Capture application.
The platform automatically associates all user-generated content with source data. This embedded data allows media organizations to verify the authenticity of such content efficiently.
Fact-checking gets a tech upgrade as AI detects election cheating
Tammy Yang, co-founder of Numbers Protocol, shed light on the company’s approach to detecting deepfakes and manipulated media. You told Cryptonews that all content submitted by news outlets and photojournalists goes through a blockchain registration process.
This allows users to upload content to a verification engine powered by an AI model. The model then compares the uploaded content to a database of similar content. If the content comes from a trusted source, the engine will display an exact match.
Conversely, content from unverified sources will be compared with similar content from verified sources. This will highlight potential discrepancies and provide users with a means to discern authentic information.
Upon registration, each piece of content receives a unique identifier, or Nid, generated using the ERC-7053 standard. This Nid corresponds directly to the hash of the content. As a result, any alteration of the original content will result in a different hash and, therefore, a different Nid. Furthermore, the AI model of the verification engine can independently verify whether the uploaded content matches the registered version.
He also said that the verification engine will also be available for public use.
“We are actively working with civil society groups and our own community in India on this project,” he said. “We believe that citizen journalists are as important as the mainstream press and equally need their content protected and archived.”
Impartial selection for election media verification
To ensure impartiality, Yang stressed that the selection process for journalists and partner media organizations is conducted in a strictly impartial manner.
“Numbers Protocol is a decentralized network and the opportunity for collaboration is open to all journalists and media,” he said. “The value of the Numbers protocol is to present the full picture, showing provenance (i.e. where the content came from, how it was generated) to anyone who wants to know the story behind the content.”
The created provenance documents verify the integrity of the digital content and can also be used by photojournalists as a mechanism to monetize and license their work.