– If this type of fake website becomes more common, it can be used to influence voters, and thus pose a potential democratic problem. That’s what Morten Langfeldt Dahlback, head of development and technology at Faktisk.no, says. news has previously reported that a fake website has caused problems for a newly started party before the local elections. Fictitious politicians and false information must have made people believe that it was the party’s own side. In reality, it was an employee of Multiconsult who was behind the website. The idea was for this to be satire. The fact-checking website “Faktisk” An independent newsroom, but owned by the major media houses news, VG, Dagbladet and TV2 in cooperation. Fritt Ord, Stiftelsen Tinius, Dagbladets Stiftelse, news and TV2 contribute up to ten million kroner to ensure the operation of the joint-stock company at the start. In fact, fact-checking the public exchange of words and uncovering fake news that is spreading in Norwegian society. The aim is to contribute to a more fact-based and generous exchange of words in Norway. In fact, claims from politicians and others must be fact-checked. The content will be available to everyone on verkächt.no The editor is Kristoffer Egeberg. Fears decisions based on fabrications – You can imagine that someone uses false pages to smear other parties, or portray their politics as something other than what it really is, either in a positive or negative direction, says Dahlback. This can lead to great confusion among voters. – People think that democratic decisions are made based on good information, when in reality it is just fabrication, made by artificial intelligence or people with bad intentions. news has asked Dahlback what you should be aware of when it comes to fake websites. Morten Langfeldt Dahlback is head of development and technology at Faktisk.no. Photo: Nicolai Delebekk / Faktisk.no Cross-check disclosures – There are two things in particular that you should be aware of when it comes to fake news and websites. The first is whether what is written or communicated there is credible, Dahlback begins. On the fake website that pretended to be the Sørlandspartiet, one could find fabricated election cases and images created with artificial intelligence of members who were allegedly going to stand for election. – Fake news often says that something very spectacular or unexpected has happened. For example, that a politician has been caught for very extensive corruption, or that a volcano has arisen outside Kristiansand. According to Dahlback, the easiest way to get a picture of whether it is true or not is to investigate whether others have mentioned it. – The media, both in Norway and other countries, are concerned with getting news out to readers as quickly as possible. It is therefore very natural that they will also cover these events and revelations. If they haven’t, there is a very good reason to be skeptical of what you see, he says. The fake website sørlandspartiet.no has now been removed. Facsimile: Sørlandspartiet.no Look at political matters with a critical eye Furthermore, there can be several ways to check whether organizations are credible. When it comes to political parties and fake websites, you can look at the political matters that are conveyed with a critical eye. – An example from the fake website of the Sørlandspartiet, which is not very credible, is that the fictitious version of the party advocated that all children should eat compote at school. Of course, it is possible that a political party thinks it is important, but it is so unlikely that you should take the party and the website with a very large grain of salt, says Dahlback. Search the register It may also be a good idea to check whether the people mentioned there have contact information, whether there is an organization number or an address for the organisation. – The easiest thing is to google the name of the website or organisation, and check it against a register such as the brøngøysund register. But there is also no guarantee to reveal that something is fake. – For example, people who have come together to collaborate on creating something can create a website before they have registered an organisation. But it is a good source of information, which, together with other things, can help to reveal fake websites or organizations. Expect professionalism Other signs of credibility are the professionalism and quality of the news or website. – Then it is about typos, whether articles look like real articles, whether there are pictures of real people, whether the page is well edited, or whether it is a well-known news medium or something completely new that has appeared. He believes that most people have a good idea of what a well-run website actually looks like. – Now there is no guarantee that you will expose a fake news, website or organization in that way. But it can give reason to believe that a page can be fake if it is full of typos, and perhaps even has AI-generated images, which was the case on the Sørlandspartiet’s fake website, says Dahlback. What are machine generated images? By training computers on several million images combined with advanced language models, it has been possible to create systems that can generate visualizations based on plain text. The best known are Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Google’s system Imagen All the systems are based on so-called diffusion models where the machine are served high-quality images which are then combined with text models. The system then removes information from the images step by step so that the software is trained to recognize the simplest and clearest features in all the images. The process can then be reversed and the software is able to create illustrations based on analysis of the text it receives as input. Much of the technology is based on open source code so that you can also train the models yourself. There is currently quite a bit of controversy surrounding this technology. Among other things, because copyright and the use of images to train the models are questioned. There is also a heated discussion about whether illustrators, artists and photographers can lose their jobs because of technology like this. Source: NRKbeta Get to know artificial intelligence In Norway there are cases as the fake website of the Sørlandspartiet to the rarities – for so long. – There is reason to believe that there may be more, and you see signs of that internationally as well. Especially the development in artificial intelligence, both when it comes to creating both images and text, makes it easier for those who want to create fake news and fake websites, says Dahlback. He says there is an expectation and concern that there will be more of this in the future. These images, of alleged politicians listed on the fake website sørlandspartiet.no, have been created with artificial intelligence. Photo: FACSIMILE: SØRLANDSPARTIET.NO The images become more realistic Currently, it is often possible to reveal portraits made with artificial intelligence. – Many of the models, such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, have a clear signature that can be recognized by colours, facial features and lighting. Nor is the anatomy always completely correct, for example in that a person has six fingers or impossible hands. If you get a little familiar with how AI images are created and typically look, then you have good cards in your hand to reveal those types of sides, Dahlback believes. But, it probably won’t last long, because the pictures keep getting better. – One should definitely prepare to do some detective work, such as googling names, finding out who the people involved behind the page are, whether the organization is real and whether it is genuine news. It is probably the most durable measures you can use to expose fake websites and news, he says.
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– A potential democratic problem – news Sørlandet – Local news, TV and radio
