The SOLARIS project against machine-generated media content has begun
"Brand Media Bulgaria" is one of the participants in the prestigious international consortium addressing the growing problem of fake content on the internet
Economic.bg On February 7-8, the inaugural meeting for the SOLARIS project, funded by the Horizon Europe program, was held in Amsterdam. Led by the University of Amsterdam, the research project addresses the issue of generating and disseminating fake news and misinformation through artificial intelligence (AI).
"Brand Media Bulgaria," the publisher of the Economic.bg website, is one of the twelve participants in the project and the only one from the country. Over the course of three years, the team will investigate the effects of new machine learning technologies for creating so-called deepfakes and their credibility among society—media representatives, authorities, and citizens.
The project focuses on one of the contemporary technologies for creating audio and video content, close to reality - Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Although they have various areas of application, their current use is rather alarming, most often associated with the creation of fake images or videos simulating real events with exceptional precision.
This urgently poses a challenge to democratic societies, related to improving accountability, transparency, and reliability of GANs. The project will also explore the positive aspects of these networks - for building democratic awareness and expanding active and inclusive citizenship.
Over the next three years, the European project will analyze the political risks associated with the technology to prevent negative consequences for EU democracies. As a result, SOLARIS will propose regulatory innovations to detect and mitigate the risks of deepfakes.
The project aims to understand the psychological aspects of GANs - how they are perceived and how credible they are, to identify the risks arising from them and possible strategies to mitigate them. Finally, the project will create value-oriented GAN content to raise awareness on key global democratic topics (such as climate change) to improve active and inclusive digital citizenship.
About the Consortium
The consortium behind SOLARIS is more than ambitious - led by the University of Amsterdam, it also includes 3 other European universities, research organizations, innovative companies developing artificial intelligence, the Italian news agency ANSA, as well as civic networks. It will involve dozens of researchers and citizens.
On behalf of "Brand Media Bulgaria", Asenya Dimitrova, project coordinator, and Georgi Zhelyazkov, editor-in-chief of Economic.bg, participated in the opening meeting, presenting their concept for disseminating the project's results and expanding its influence among key stakeholders. Bulgaria will host one of the analyzed cases, representing an environment with a problematic media landscape, generally low levels of media literacy, and a highly susceptible society to disinformation attacks.
If you have any questions, work on a related topic, or wish to participate, do not hesitate to contact us at: [email protected] or [email protected].
SOLARIS is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program, as part of agreement no. 101094665 and will be implemented between February 2023 and January 2026.