Author Archive: apostolid

Presentation of InVID verification technologies at JUDNM-T

InVID verification technologies at JUDNM-T

The InVID project and the InVID verification technologies, were presented on a workshop focusing on tools for content verification. The workshop was co-organized by CERTH/InVID and the Media Informatics Lab of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept. of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Open Knowledge Greece Foundation and the Journalists’ Union of Daily Newspapers of Macedonia – Thrace (JUDNM-T). It took place on Wednesday 6th of June 2018, in the conference centre of JUDNM-T, in Thessaloniki, Greece. The audience of the workshop (approximately 40 people), was comprised by journalists, academics and Master students of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept.

After the introductory part of the event, which was made by Prof. Andreas Veglis, the workshop started by an overall presentation of the InVID project by Dr. Vasileios Mezaris, the project co-ordinator. Dr. Mezaris explained the project’s motivation with the help of some indicative examples of fake news. Following, he described the project’s goals and overall concept for meeting these goals, and briefly discussed the developed integrated technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification. The given presentation can be seen below.

Subsequently, Mr. Evlampios Apostolidis from CERTH-ITI, gave a talk on fake news that rely on video reuse. In particular, Mr. Apostolidis presented some examples of such fakes, discussed the most common approaches of journalists to deal with this type of fake news and explained how the InVID technologies can assist journalists to identify the original video source. For this, he presented the developed web application for video fragmentation and reverse keyframe search, that enables the users/journalists to perform reverse video search at the fragment-level, and detect previously published versions of the same video online. The given presentation can be found below.

Following, Dr. Symeon Papadopoulos from CERTH-ITI, discussed the current status on the creation and spread of fake news and rumors via social networks and listed a number of credibility signals that could allow a user (i.e. a journalist or a media verification expert) to evaluate the veracity of a news item. Finally, we presented the functionalities and characterists of the developed context analysis and aggregation toolkit that has been developed in InVID and is integrated in the InVID Verification Plugin, and highlighted the creation (and future public release) of a constantly extendable Fake Video Corpus, that can support the current and future reseach on this field.

The first part of the workshop ended with a presentation focusing on image forensics analysis, made by Dr. Markos Zampoglou from CERTH-ITI. Dr. Zampoglou explained the existing challenges related to the detection of tampering of digital images, highlighting the fact that the sharing of these images via social media platforms entails a re-compression process that usually erases most of the digital traces that could assist the identification of manipulations. Based on this observation, he stressed the need to analyse the most earliest version of a digital image, and discussed the funtionalities of the REVEAL Media Verificaiton Assistant that is integrated in the InVID Verification Plugin. The given presentation can be seen in the following.

The second part of the workshop was a hands-on session, where the participants of the workshop had the opportunity to get activelly involved in a step-by-step process containing:

  • the installation of the InVID Verification Plugin for both Chrome and Firefox users (made by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a brief explanation of all different components integrated in the plugin (given by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on video re-use (performed by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on context change (performed by Olga Papadopoulou, also from CERTH-ITI);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on image tampering (performed by Markos Zampoglou).

The aforementioned examples were used for demonstration purposes, while an additional set of examples was provided to the participants of the workshop, aiming to motivate them to discover the functionalities, capabilities and limitations of the different components of the plugin, and send us their feedback (via the integrated survey) concerning their experience with this tool.

InVID plugin surpassed 3000 downloads

InVID plugin surpassed 3000 downloads

We are very pleased to announce that our free plugin that supports video verification has surpassed 3.000 downloads. The functionalities of this integrated toolbox for content verification are now widely used by journalists, experts of the human rights community, and others dealing with video verification.

We thank all users and supporters of this technology and we promise to make it even better! Would you like to help us on this? Then, simply take the survey and give us feedback about the tool!

If you haven’t discovered the tool yet, get it for free from: http://www.invid-project.eu/verify

Survey about the InVID Verification Plugin

Survey about the InVID Verification Plugin

InVID at the IEEE Workshop on Information Forensics and Security 2017

InVID at IEEE WIFS 2017

The InVID Innovation Manager, Mr. Denis Teyssou from AFP, participated at the IEEE Workshop on Information Forensics and Security (WIFS) 2017 that took place in Rennes (France) at INRIA Bretagne Atlantique, and gave a talk on the state of the art in journalism about fake image and video detection.

During his presentation, Mr. Teyssou reported on a variety of currently existing guidelines, tools and approaches for forensics analysis, and discussed about investigative journalism and post-mortem analysis of events. Following, he showcased the application of some of these tools in real-life scenarios, to better illustrate their effectiveness in evaluating the originality and trustworthiness of a media item. Finally, Mr. Teyssou presented part of the work undertaken so far in the InVID project, focusing on the developed InVID Verification Plugin (freely available at: www.invid-project.eu/verify).

The functionality of several analysis components of this tool, such as the ones for video fragmentation and reverse keyframe search, advanced Twitter search, detailed inspection of images using a digital magnifying glass, and reverse search of a flipped image, was discussed with the help of representative examples. Through his presentation, Mr. Teyssou highlighted the usefulness of the developed technology for fake news video debunking, which has already gained some very positive feedback on social media platforms, from experts of the media verification community.

The given presentation can be seen below.

The entire talk of Mr. Teyssou can be seen in the following.

The InVID plugin now with a new launch menu and extended functionalities

New release of InVID Verification Plugin

Check the new version of the InVID plugin (released on January 31st 2018) that contains a new launch menu and extended functionalities for content collection and verification. After fixing a number of bugs, and thanks to the valuable and constructive feedback from the users of the tool, we developed the next version of the InVID verification plugin, which:

  • Contains a new launch popup menu with three options (see image on the right):
    • “Open InVID” opens the user interface of the plugin in a new tab of the browser
    • “Video Urls” allows journalists to identify the video URL in the HTML code of the webpage, open it a new tab that enables the direct download of the video or use it for analysing the video through the Keyframe component of the tool (supports Instagram, Vimeo and Liveleak platforms)
    • “Images Urls” gathers all the existing images in the webpage and permits a more organised inspection of these images through the offered functionalities in the contextual menu of the InVID plugin (supports Instagram, Vimeo and Liveleak platforms)

An example of how the URL of an Instagram video can be retrieved using the newly added functionality is illustrated in the following image.

  • Supports YouTube shorteners in the entire set of integrated video analysis functionalities
  • Offers an enhanced contextual menu
  • Includes the latest version of the Metadata component, that offers a preview of the picture and supports Dropbox and Google drive URLs
  • Integrates the latest version of the Analysis component, which now supports Twitter content and provides a link to timeanddate.com for direct convertion to local time
  • Offers Tineye as an alternative reverse search engine, in all tabs where this searching process is applicable

Get the Chrome- and Firefox-compatible versions of this release, from http://www.invid-project.eu/verify and send us your feedback!

InVID at MIL meeting on social media detection and verification

InVID at MIL meeting on social media detection and verification

The InVID project and the developed technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification, were presented on a meeting focusing on tools for detection and verification of videos shared on social networks, that was co-organized by CERTH/InVID and the Media Informatics Lab of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept. of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, on Thursday 14th of December 2017.

An audience (approx. 80 people), comprised by professors, academics and students of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept, journalists and media verification experts, was initially informed about the InVID project by the project co-ordinator Dr. Vasileios Mezaris, who introduced the project’s motivation, goals, overall concept and integrated technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification.

Following, Mr. Evlampios Apostolidis from CERTH-ITI, gave a talk on fake news that rely on video reuse and the way that InVID handles such fakes. In particular, he presented the developed web application for video fragmentation and reverse keyframe search, that assists journalists to perform reverse video search at the fragment-level, and detect previously published versions of the same video online.

Then, Dr. Symeon Papadopoulos from CERTH-ITI, discussed methods for automated detection of fake posts on social media and highlighted the efficiency and functionality of an InVID tool (which was based on one of the outcomes of the Reveal EU-funded project) for contextual analysis. This tool is capable to identify and evaluate verification-related content, and provide clues about the trustworthiness of a social media item to the journalists.

Subsequently, Dr. Markos Zampoglou from CERTH-ITI, presented the developed tools for image forensic analysis. Dr. Zampoglou described, with the help of some representative examples, different types of image tampering, explained the InVID apprach to identidy many of them, and outlined the challenges of this task, the limitations of existing approaches as well as some future directions.

Finally, Mr. Denis Teyssou from AFP, joined the meeting via Google Hangouts and gave a nice presentation about the verification functionalities of the developed plugin for fake news video debunking.

Details about the event (in Greek) are available at: http://pacific.jour.auth.gr/?p=2896

The program of the event (in Greek) is available at: http://pacific.jour.auth.gr/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/program_InVid.pdf

InVID at UN experts’ meeting on Digital Image Authentication and Classification

InVID logo

Members of the InVID team will take part in a focused workshop organized by the UN High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva on December 6-7.

This experts’ meeting on “Digital Image Authentication and Classification” will look into:

  • how human rights investigations are conducted by OHCHR & NGOs;
  • what image- and multimedia-related problems and technical challenges are encountered in the course of such investigations;
  • and how existing and under-development tools for authenticating, analyzing, and classifying digital images (including tools we are developing in InVID!) could contribute to the work of human rights investigators.

Meet InVID at the NEM Summit 2017

Meet InVID at the NEM Summit 2017

On 29-30 November, the NEM Initiative holds its annual summit in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Reina Sofía. InVID will be represented by Jochen Spangenberg of Deutsche Welle. Jochen will deliver a keynote on day one of the conference, entitled “What the F _ _ _!?”: Handling and verifying social media content.

The aim of the NEM Initiative

NEM stands for New European Media. The primary aim of the NEM Initiative is to provide a platform that fosters “the convergence among Media, Content, Creative industries, Social Media, Broadcasting and Telecom sectors, as well as Consumer electronics to develop a common innovation environment for the new European media landscape.”

Every year, the NEM Initiative hosts its annual NEM Summit. This year, it will take place in Madrid, Spain, on 29 and 30 November 2017.

A versatile programme

The NEM Summit programme consists of various strands. Wednesday morning will focus on EU policies and strategies, upcoming calls for projects and future strategic orientations of the NEM Initiative. The afternoon then sees three keynote presentations and a plenary session on new programme formats.

The second day of the summit, Thursday 30 November, has two parallel tracks throughout the day. Topical areas include:

  • Cultural Heritage and Digital Tourism,
  • The Future of Digital Media,
  • Toward the Future of Social Media,
  • Building the FMI Ecosystem through Experimentation,
  • Personalisation and Accessibility,
  • Cluster Excellence for Digital Creative Industries.

In the course of both days, attendees can also attend the exhibition that runs throughout the two days of the summit.

Meeting up

If you are interested in meeting up with Jochen to talk about InVID and what we get up to, drop him a line. You can contact him via Twitter (@jospang). Of course, you are also most welcome to attend his keynote speech in which he will also refer to some of the work we have carried out so far in InVID. Hasta la vista en Madrid!

Second issue of the InVID Newsletter

Second issue of the InVID Newsletter

We are pleased to announce the release of the second issue of the InVID newsletter! The aim of this issue is to inform the community, our readers and supporters, about the developed tools and applications for media collection and verification.

Within the pages of this issue, the reader can find information about:

  • the adopted software development methodology and the progress made so far in the project;
  • our latest advances over a set of individual technologies for media collection, analysis, retrieval and rights management;
  • the developed InVID prototypes, namely, the Visual Analytics Dashboard, the Verification Plugin, the Verification Application and the Mobile Application;
  • our recent dissemination activities, and the impact that these activities and the InVID prototypes have on the media and the news verification community.

The issue ends with details about the InVID consortium and how to get in contact with us.

Please find the newsletter at: http://www.invid-project.eu/newsletters

The InVID-organized workshop MuVer at ACMMM 2017 was successfully concluded

InVID organizes the 1st International Workshop on Multimedia Verification

The InVID-organized workshop MuVer at ACMMM 2017 was successfully concluded on October 27th in Mountain View, California, USA.

Two keynote talks and three oral paper presentations, two of which reported some of the latest developments in InVID, were delivered at the workshop and sparked very interesting discussions on multimedia verification goals and societal needs, necessary technologies, and associated privacy issues and concerns.

In the workshop’s website, the slides of the keynotes and oral paper presentations delivered at the workshop are gradually being posted; the complete set of presentations will be publicly available soon in the above link.

The workshop’s proceedings have also been made available by the ACM, and can be accessed at https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3132384.