Full Fact
The fact checking app, that flags up to 100,000 potentially false claims each day.
False rumours are known to spread faster and further than true information.
A team of 7 Google.org Fellows assisted Full Fact through building AI-based tools that automatically flag potential false claims, connect them to similar claims, and assess their truthfulness.
“Participating in the Fellowship gave me the opportunity to collaborate with Full Fact and other Google employees. I developed project management and machine learning skills, and I'm very happy to have worked alongside highly creative and intelligent teammates who are passionate about making the world a better place.”
– Amanda Rodriguez,
Google.org Fellow and Program Manager
“The Full Fact Fellowship was the best thing I have done in my career. And I have been working in IT since 1991.”
– Brendan Hills,
Google.org Fellow and Engineer
How the Google.org Fellows helped
- Supported to build machine learning tools to identify verifiable ‘claims’ in the news media, and a natural language processing model to match claims together.
- Assisted in the development of speech-to-text models to match claims made on the radio to claims made in text-based media.
- Worked with Full Fact to build a search engine to scan thousands of articles and find similar claims made with different words.
- Created a web application that highlights claims that may need to be checked, then provides extra links and tools for a journalist to investigate further.
Impact of the project
- The AI increased claim detection by 1000x (from several hundred claims to 100K per day).
- The tool now works across four languages. The intuitive interface has directly led to fact checks being published in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Argentina and the UK.