Member-only story
TrueMedia.org is a non-profit organization committed to detecting political deepfakes and supporting fact-checking efforts for the 2024 election. It was founded by Oren Etzioni, the former founding CEO of Allen Institute of AI, and its entire first year of operations was made possible by a generous donation from a single donor, Garrett Camp, the co-founder of Uber. In 2024, TrueMedia developed free-of-charge deepfake detection tools for news organizations, social media companies, investigative reporters, and anyone with internet access. Our tools empowered users to verify the authenticity of digital content. This technology is used not only by people in the United States but also by people all over the world.
Open-Sourcing Technology for the Public Benefit
The mission of TrueMedia is to protect truth and integrity online, prevent misinformation and disinformation, and therefore uphold democracy. The organization’s primary focus is on developing advanced technologies to address these challenges.
When Oren first shared the idea for this project, I was immediately excited — not just by the technical aspect of building ML applications from scratch, particularly leveraging generative techniques to identify generated content, but also because it felt like an opportunity to tithe professionally. After working for decades in profit-driven ventures, I wanted to give at least one year to a higher cause. I joined the project as its first ML…
