MONTRÉAL, July 29, 2024

Discerning fact from fiction in our online world has become an increasingly difficult problem. However, with the growing sophistication of online misinformation, it can be challenging to trust what you read online.

The Honourable Pascale St‑Onge, Minister of Canadian Heritage, announced funding to the Université de Montréal for their project to combat online misinformation. This project will develop a website and a web-browser extension dedicated to detecting misinformation.

The Université de Montréal’s project will use one of the latest artificial intelligence tools, large language models, to detect and counteract misinformation narratives prevalent online in Canada. Designed to be comprehensive, user-friendly and context-aware, this mechanism will be capable of detecting misinformation across languages, modalities (text, audio, video, images), and sources. This technology will help implement effective behavioral nudges to mitigate the proliferation of “fake news” stories in online communities; it will be integrated into a website and browser extension interface, alerting users to potential misinformation to reduce their likelihood of sharing this content. This misinformation detection tool should ultimately enhance public knowledge, media integrity and democratic resilience by enabling users to quickly verify online content, which will improve their ability to judge information quality.

The Government of Canada is providing $292,675 for this project through the Digital Citizen Contribution Program.