8 Ways AI Innovations Can Improve Media Literacy

Today there’s nearly instant access to a massive breadth and depth of knowledge. On the other hand, the information available can range from well-supported facts and figures to AI clickbait. 

The question then becomes, how do you discern misinformation from real and authentic content? After all, humans struggle to identify AI-generated text with absolute certainty. 

So, how can we expect to improve media literacy? Let’s explore 8 ways that AI innovations can help.

Key Takeaways

• Real-time fact-checking with tools like the Originality.ai fact checker makes reviewing facts a breeze so you can publish with confidence.
• AI offers a number of innovations that can improve media literacy including, analyzing sources, verifying citations, and conducting social media sentiment analysis.
• Social media platforms like Meta use AI to review content and identify misinformation, manipulated media, and deepfakes.

1. Real-Time Fact Checking

AI-powered tools can streamline fact-checking whether that means articles, blogs, or social media posts.

The Originality.ai Automated Fact-Checker is powered by an internally built AI to provide a convenient tool for web publishers to review facts. It can be paired with a suite of Originality.ai’s best-in-class editorial tools that also include AI Detection and Plagiarism Detection.

Adding real-time fact-checking into your editorial toolkit is a key part of maintaining authenticity and integrity in the publishing process. 

Fact-checking in real-time offers several benefits, such as helping to prevent AI hallucinations in your content and establishing consistency with high-quality, factually correct content.

2. Analyze Context and Research Sources

AI also offers an innovative opportunity for researching the credibility of publishers or sources. Using AI for research into the sources cited can help to provide context into the source’s publication history, credentials, past and current affiliations, and more.

You can use AI to investigate this as an initial step in the research process that pulls together details into one quick summary based on the context it’s presented with (in your prompt). 

However, it is important to note that further research should be conducted to follow up on the results provided by AI to avoid AI hallucinating the sources.

3. Verifying Citations

AI-powered fact-checking tools are beneficial for cross-referencing and then highlighting sources where additional manual verification is needed. It’s a great way to make sure that the statements you’re publishing are rooted in facts and statistics published by professionals. 

For instance, the Originality.ai Automated Fact Checker provides sources so that editors and publishers can review and verify citations.

If you’re looking for more information on checking citations, read our guide on Popular Citation Checkers. 

4. Authenticating AI vs. Human-Written Content

At Originality.ai our AI Detector offers an innovative way to maintain transparency about whether content is generated or human-written. While humans may struggle to identify AI text, AI detectors are an effective way to spot AI content as noted by several third-party studies.

Then, Google’s SynthID AI watermark, which was recently released, can also help to further establish transparency. 

The invisible SynthID AI watermark can’t be seen by the human eye because it’s internally embedded. However, Google believes it’ll help identify AI content in future by whether it’s watermarked, unwatermarked, or uncertain.

5. Creating Transparency About AI Content on Social Media

Today’s social media sites like Facebook and Instagram give users the option to label something as “imagined with AI”, but even if they don’t, if Meta strongly believes a post is AI-generated, it may apply a label on its own. 

What’s more, this isn’t just a Facebook or Meta-centric initiative. It also aims to identify AI images from major brands like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Adobe, MidJourney, and Shutterstock.

Read more about Meta and detecting AI on social media.

6. Identifying Misinformation in Media (and Social Media)

Misinformation in the media was a concern even before AI and words like ChatGPT entered our common vocabulary. 

Some of the best fact-checking websites, have monitored and fact-checked the media for over a decade. For instance, the Poynter Institute’s Politifact was launched in 2007 to provide a reliable resource for verifying facts, especially in regard to politics.

Today, identifying misinformation or manipulated media is still a concern, especially with AI hallucinations and the popularity of social media, where many now check the news.

In response, some social media providers such as Meta (Facebook), have provided guides about their approach to identifying misinformation. 

• Meta notes that AI is a key part of their process in identifying and addressing misinformation. 
• Meta highlights that they use a “state-of-the-art deepfake detection model” to identify deepfakes.
• Further, they note that once the AI system spots manipulated media it flags it for independent fact-checking.

What does this mean as a social media user? The algorithm will essentially lessen the chances of a deepfake image making the rounds. This can help reduce the chances of people sharing content that’s inaccurate. 

7. Sentiment Analysis Applications

One of AI’s top benefits is its ability to take a wealth of information, analyze it, and pull out key information and insights that a human reviewer might miss. 

One example of where AI shines in this regard is through sentiment analysis. For instance, Microsoft provides guides on how to use Sentiment Analysis Models and notes that it can help to evaluate positive or negative sentiments in social media.

By looking at social media posts, AI can pinpoint language that’s particularly emotionally charged (with positive or negative sentiments) and which might indicate bias or skew user perception to one extreme or another. 

This type of innovative application offers opportunities for AI to help improve media literacy by adding transparency around whether a piece of content is emotionally charged.

8. Trend Monitoring

Just as AI can zero in on sentiment analysis or be trained to identify deepfakes or manipulated media, it can also be used to monitor trending topics. 

When misinformation is spread it may be incorporated into trending or popular terms like politics, natural disasters, or even celebrity news, as a way to amplify the spread of fake news with popular content. 

AI (as noted by Meta) can quickly flag misinformation posts that incorporate trending or popular topics for human review before they gain traction on social networks. 

Final Thoughts: What You Can Do Today to Improve Media Literacy

Having instant information at your fingertips has changed how people get their news. 

At the same time, with AI innovations, we’re now able to check facts in real-time, analyze sentiment, verify citations, research sources, and even further transparency in media and social media to reduce the spread of misinformation and improve media literacy. 

For this reason, it’s more important than ever to understand what’s changing in the media and how fact-checkers and other tools can help us do just that. 

In understanding the role that AI plays in advancing fact-checking, we can take steps today to be as prepared and informed as possible.

Learn more about fact-checking in our top guides: 

• Why Is Fact-checking Important?
• AI Fact-Checking Accuracy Study
• Fact-Checking for Businesses