Fighting the spread of fake news has been an important task for a lot of tech companies right now. Google in particular has continually brought tools and features to help users detect what is real and what is misinformation (now whether they believe it or not is another matter). But visual media can also be a source of misinformation as evidenced by all those conspiracy theory videos floating around on YouTube. The video platform has its own battle but when it comes to images, Google will now be also fact-checking the results of your image search when relevant.
When you search for something on Google Images, you might now see a “Fact Check” label under the thumbnail image results. If you want to read a summary of the fact check, you’ll have to tap on the image and it will open in a larger format. The labels can actually be seen on both articles about the specific images or for fact check articles that have that image in their story. Not all images will probably have that label but those that need contextual fact-checking will definitely have it.
Similar to their fact check system for articles, the results for the images come from “independent and authoritative sources on the web” that meets the (hopefully) stringent criteria of Google. They also use ClaimReview, an open method used to fact check content to search engines. The labels will also not affect the ranking for search results. You will still supposedly get the “most relevant, reliable information”.
Google has been highlighting fact checks in Search and Google News also using ClaimReview. YouTube has also been bringing fact check information panels but for now it’s still limited to Brazil, India, and the U.S. You can access the fact check library through a dedicated search tool and an open API, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.
Google is also putting their money where their mouth is by giving $5.6 million in funding support for various organizations that are dedicated to the work of fact-checking. Now all the more when the correct information is crucial should tech companies be investing in fact-checking tools.
