Fact-checkers enlisting AI to detect fake news ahead of GE2025

An outfit of fact-checkers is enlisting artificial intelligence (AI) and calling for more volunteers to help verify news sent in by WhatsApp users, in anticipation of a surge in fake news in the lead-up to the general election in 2025.

- Osmond Chia

CheckMate, a free fact-checking service launched in 2023, aims to at least double its pool of checkers.

In January 2025, it will also deploy generative AI in its WhatsApp chatbot to automate the detection of telltale signs of a scam or unreliable news, said founder Tan Bing Wen.

Mr Tan, 35, who received the Government Technology Agency's Outstanding Citizen Contributor award in November for his work on CheckMate, said there is an urgent need to shore up ways to clarify lies that tend to spread like wildfire during key political events.

Fake news will not let up, if the falsehoods spread during the presidential campaign in 2023 and the widespread disinformation seen in 2024 in various elections worldwide are any indication, he said.

Days before President Tharman Shanmugaratnam won the election on Sept 1, 2023, hoax messages falsely claiming that presidential candidate Tan Kin Lian had won 60 per cent of the vote circulated online, said CheckMate's Mr Tan, whose team debunked the claim by replying to users who had uploaded screenshots of these posts to CheckMate's WhatsApp service.

He said this was just one of several falsehoods that surfaced during the election.

"We've dealt with one presidential election when we were much smaller. We will try and ramp up our number of fact-checkers before the (general) election, that's for sure," Mr Tan said, in the hope that generative AI and more checkers will improve the speed and accuracy of the service.

Local fact-checking initiatives such as CheckMate, Black Dot Research and Factually have grown in number over the years to counter the spread of misinformation, allowing users to get alerted about prominent fake news or upload content to verify its credibility.