The Verge reported that the news around Ebola was wreaking havoc in Texas towns. It was spreading like wildfire on the social landscape and these were messages from sources that sounded like newspapers. This happened in 2014 and what followed were trails of fake news sending shock waves across the media and user world.

As per The New York Times, just before the presidential elections in the US, fake news and memes became the tools for perpetrators to influence the outcome of elections. Fake news is rearing its ugly head time and time again. Not for nothing are the tech behemoths, Facebook and Google as well as media companies waging war on fake news. Is there a way to differentiate the fake news from the truth?

The trouble begins when too much of information is shared through the internet – information that needs more than a human mind to identify the fake enjoying the status like the original. In this realm, artificial intelligence and big data have emerged as potent tools to track news stories and identify fake news items playing the trick on the user.

Is Artificial intelligence-driven data veracity the lens on misinformation?

Any news becomes a fake news if the information presented is incorrect or information doesn’t represent facts that it is expected to carry. When it comes to information, it is also about assuring the veracity of information as it is about moving, processing and securing information. In short, fake news and information are more of a big data veracity issue.

When it comes to handling fake news, none have put a braver face than Facebook. With trillions of user posts, Facebook realized that manual fact-checking wouldn’t do any good to solve the fake news problem. Facebook turned to artificial intelligence to arrest this problem. Artificial intelligence is being leveraged to find words or even patterns of words that can throw light on fake news stories.

Artificial intelligence is now looked upon as the cornerstone to separate the good from bad in the news field. That is because artificial intelligence makes it easy to learn behaviors, possible through pattern recognition. Harnessing artificial intelligence’s power, fake news can be identified by taking a cue from articles that were flagged as inaccurate by people in the past.

As the volume of data grows bigger by the day, so is the chance of handling misinformation as it challenges the human ability to uncover the truth. Artificial intelligence has turned into a beacon of hope for to assure data veracity, and more importantly, identify fake news.

How to deal with misinformation dynamics?

Spreading misinformation across the social landscape is not wholly about accidental inaccuracies; it is more about intentional misinformation that is dynamic. Misinformation dynamics is all about connecting fake news to the new big data concept called the data veracity.

Borge-Holthoefer and Berti-Équille came up with the staggering revelation that traditional approaches stand unequal to deal with this intentional misinformation. Where misinformation spreads like fire, dealing with fake news calls for sophisticated approaches based on artificial intelligence to determine data veracity and the authenticity of information.

How is fake news unearthed?

As the world gets ready to tackle fake news, technology has set the trend by showing us how to identify fake news. Here are some ways leveraged to fight fake news.