Can AI solve the problem of defamation?

Defamation and hate speech are the big banes of our times. Don’t you just wish that someone, anyone, could work on technology that could help newsrooms cope with it better?

Well, CaliberAI is that company. Neil Brady, the founder of CaliberAI, is a former journalist who worked with the Guardian and Storyful. His father, also a journalist, served as the editor of the Irish Times.

The idea is simple enough. Software that automates defamation and helps editors and readers.

“I said to him, ‘Do you think an editor, a journalist, would use that if we could build that kind of tool?’” Neil Brady recalls (as reported by Wired magazine). “And he said, ‘I’ve no bloody doubt they would.’ And that’s when we said, OK, let’s do it.”

It’s got off to a good start. The start-up has received funding of €300,000 pre-seed funding from Enterprise Ireland.

“Our main product right now is a browser extension,” Brady explained. “It’s a bit like a cross between the spellcheck function of a word processor and the notification functions of Grammarly or Textio. It warns a user when something with a high risk of being defamatory or hateful has been typed, prompting she or he to think before publishing.”

The main target market for the company is newspapers, radio and other media outlets.

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