Bhopal: Pestered by the barrage of misleading health tips on family WhatsApp groups these days, two students at IIT Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh have created an AI-powered training platform to tackle fake news on social media with “empathy” and a “compassionate way”.
The platform 'Bunk with Kindness' has been created by IIT Kanpur students Himanshu Pandey and Hamida Syed. Himanshu hails from Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh while Hamida is from Delhi.
In a special conversation with ETV Bharat, Himanshu and Hamida, during their visit to Bhopal, talked in detail over their innovative platform and its utility in times of misinformation and fake news.
Countering Fake News With Facts Not Enough
According to Himanshu, countering fake news, say, on WhatsApp, merely with facts, is not enough and demands empathy and compassion with the fake news peddler to convince him or her to really believe in facts.
Himanshu said that their AI-powered platform 'Bunk with Kindness' is one such tool, which convinces the fake news peddler to believe in facts.
"In this AI tool, there is an attempt to improve this conversation with different points. Because convincing a person with facts alone does not have much effect. It is taken very lightly. So this tool tells what is being shared in front of a person to change his mind and what new things need to be added with some emotion," he said.
Misleading Health Tips On Family WhatsApp Group As Inspiration
Talking about the inspiration behind the AI-powered tool to tackle misinformation and fake news, Himanshu said that his own family WhatsApp group would be bombarded with a flurry of misleading health tips, which at times, prompted his family members to skip medicines. He said that the misleading health tips prompted the idea for an AI-powered tool, which could tackle fake news.
“My parents have diabetes. They used to try a new remedy every day instead of taking medicines. When we used to tell them that what they were following was fake news while citing ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) research, no one would listen. Then we felt that there is probably some mistake in the way we are explaining, then we designed this tool. Through this tool, your way of explaining can be more effective," he said.
How Does 'Bunk With Kindness' Work?
Hamida Syed, co-developer of 'Bunk With Kindness' explained how the AI tool works. Hamida said that their AI-powered tool fine-tunes your response to the fake news on social media.
"It gives you a chance to refine your response before talking to a person who believes in fake news. Take any problem, for example, health. It will show that all the news related to health has been fact checked. Now, before alerting your family about the misleading information, our platform will enable you to tell them the truth,” Hamida explained.
Co-developer Himanshu added that their AI-platform 'Bunk With Kindness' is equipped with a content repository that fetches data from existing fact checks. According to Himanshu, the health sector is the most vulnerable to fake news.
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