FORNY20-FORNY2020

Factiverse's mission is to automate detection of misinformation and provide a credibility check for any online information by using cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. The company was founded in 2019 by Associate Professor Vinay Setty and the TTO Validé, building on long-term research at the University of Stavanger (UiS) and elsewhere. Intellectual assets are secured and Freedom-to-Operate (FTO) confirmed. US patent number 10,803,387 (title: "Deep neural architectures for detecting false claims") is licensed exclusively to Factiverse. Additional protection stems from proprietary software code and future optimization gains from processing large data sets and learning from past patterns. The founding team has been expanded to include Madina Salamova (aka. Maria Amelie) in the role as CEO, a well-known journalist, author and business developer, in addition to four (4) staff dedicated to data science, front-end/UI, and user experience/UX and testing. Experienced board members and leaders from the media industry have joined the team on the road to market. The primary objective of the "Searching for the Truth" (literally and figuratively) project is to de-risk technical development and accelerate market entry for a novel type of automated misinformation detection tool. A tailored fact-checking search engine is at the heart of the project; multilingual and aware of a range of heterogeneous sources, synergistically working with deep neural networks. The objective will be accomplished by testing prototypes in a real operational environment (TRL 6) together with media companies, performing as a preferred tool for further commercial adaptation and agreements. More technically focused secondary objectives are managed at the work package level in a project plan spanning 24 months. Close alignment is sought with UiS, Validé and media industry players to increase the credibility and robustness of the implementation. The project is on track as per November 2021.