DW Innovation

First Fedi post after a long weekend. And it seems that we've hit 7777 followers – and entered the Top 1000 of Mastodon accounts. 😮

We know, it's not about the sheer numbers. It's about the community and the impact. But still... 🤗

Many thanks for your interest in our projects and prototypes, our comments and curated links. Cheers! 🥂

#journalism #technology #research #innovation #fediverse #community

Even the smallest researchers and project managers need a break. 🐣🐣🐣

This account is hitting pause until April 13th. Some team members are off, some are operating at chicklet capacity.

Also: Have you seen the internet lately? There's plenty of content out there. You'll manage. We're a media tech R&D team, not a content machine. So we're doing what research people do best: stepping back, thinking, and occasionally going down a slide.

Happy Easter. See you on the other side. 🌱

In a world where AI agents consume, remix, and redistribute content at machine speed, three questions become urgent:

➡️ How do you prove what's yours?
➡️ How do you declare what AI did to it?
➡️ And how do you set the terms under which it can be used?

@mirkolorenz@vis.social tackles the issue in this longread: https://innovation.dw.com/articles/why-content-needs-a-fingerprint-not-just-a-watermark

#AI #information #attribution #provenance

"Experts warn that Trump’s destruction of the country’s data infrastructure will have lasting impacts on all aspects of life – whether it’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to extreme weather, public health departments’ monitoring of harmful new drugs in their communities or how food banks get meals to hungry families."

Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa for The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/07/trump-administration-deleting-data

#data #ddj

For the BBC, Kali Hays reports on the dark side of Meta Ray-Bans. Among the issues: women filmed without their consent.

👇

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj37z8357e5o

#technology #SmartGlasses #privacy

"These workers are required to stare at horrific content for many hours straight with few mental health resources, are largely managed by opaque algorithms, and, crucially, are the workers powering the runaway valuations of some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world."

Jason Koebler for @404mediaco@mastodon.social:
https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/

#AI #society

How about picking up your old, favorite comic books instead of doomscrolling the next time?

"I realised that I needed to preserve my mental health and make new routines before I became entirely consumed with fear and anger. And who knows more about self-care than your inner child?"

Joel Harley for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/27/the-one-change-that-worked-i-swapped-doomscrolling-for-reading-comic-books

The idea that scattering posts across the #internet under a fake name keeps you safe may no longer hold:

"If #LLMs' success in deanonymizing people improves, the researchers warn, governments could use the techniques to unmask online critics, corporations could assemble customer profiles for 'hyper-targeted advertising', and attackers could build profiles of targets at scale to launch highly personalized social engineering #scams."

Dan Goodin for @arstechnica@mastodon.social:

👇
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/03/llms-can-unmask-pseudonymous-users-at-scale-with-surprising-accuracy/

"Have you ever used a Generative AI tool to finish a task in five minutes that once required five hours of deep, agonizing focus? As you watch the results flash across the screen, instead of a surge of pride, you might feel a creeping sense of dread. (...) This article explores the cognitive dissonance of the AI era (...)."

David-Ștefan Lăpușneanu for @hackernoon@mas.to:

https://hackernoon.com/ai-is-making-workers-faster-and-more-insecure

"The challenge is no longer only to correct the public record, but to intervene in the private, communal and relational flows where falsehoods often take hold before they become visible to institutions."

For Poynter, Laura Zommer and Natalia Colombo discuss how journalistic fact-checking could and should evolve in this day and age:

👇
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2026/fact-checking-has-to-go-where-misinformation-actually-spreads/

#misinfo #disinfo #factchecking

How to recover and preserve online posts via The Wayback Machine, Archive Today, Perma CC, Ghostarchive – and old school screenshots:

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-how-to-recover-deleted-web-pages/a-74106591

(Alima de Graaf and Chi-Hui Lin for DW Digital World)

#Archives #DigitalForensics

"This year, the (.) analysis highlights an alarming deterioration in the conditions for journalism in many parts of the world (...) as 100 out of 180 countries and territories have seen their press freedom score decline."

https://rsf.org/en/classement-mondial-2026-par-r%C3%A9gions-une-d%C3%A9gradation-de-la-libert%C3%A9-de-la-presse-dans-100-pays-sur

#journalism #pressfreedom #rsf

Why do people become reporters today?

Check out the replies these young students gave: https://www.collegejournalism.org/student-press-report/the-next-generation-of-journalism-graduates-is-ready-to-fight

(via College Journalism / Sydney McGarr)

#journalism

"Humanity (…) has constructed the most sophisticated cage ever devised, decorated it with infinite scrolling and dopamine-triggering notifications, and voluntarily imprisoned itself within it (…). We did not stumble into this dystopia accidentally."

An opinion piece by Mary making the case for a decentralized internet:

https://hackernoon.com/the-death-of-the-centralized-internet-why-decentralization-is-humanitys-last-act-of-digital-rebel

(via @hackernoon@mas.to)

#internet #decentralization

"Satellite imagery has long helped investigative journalists gather intelligence on conflict zones and track changes in remote landscapes. Now, in a new wave of satellite-based investigations, reporters are leaning on machine learning models to automate parts of this work and scale up their analysis to an unprecedented degree."

Andrew Deck for @niemanlab@mastodon.social:

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/geospatial-ai-is-reinventing-the-rainforest-beat/

#satellites #journalism #AI

#Democracy needs a factual foundation.

That's why we're launching three new projects that deal with topics like #provenance and #transparency, audio #forensics, and user-centered #disinformation countering.

All of them are funded by the Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt – which recognizes the importance of societal and digital resilience.

More information on CleanFeed, PADSE, and Fake-O-Meter over here:
https://innovation.dw.com/articles/new-projects-verification-mil-transparency-bmftr

And a big shout-out to our partners!

If you're into #XR and #3Dmodels, check out the FUNES project.

This community is building "an ever-groving 3D #archive, a digital memory of our shared heritage."

Free access 24/7, #opensource FTW!

👉 https://funes.world/

There’s more and more evidence suggesting #LLMs judge dialect speakers – a lot. And in shocking ways.

Fintan Burke for DW about discrimination you may be confronted with when using #AI models:

👇
https://www.dw.com/en/ai-chatbots-are-alarmingly-biased-against-dialect-speakers/a-75247017

For Poynter, Louis Jacobson reflects on the mission of fact checkers – which is all about holding politicians to account, getting to the heart of the matter, and providing audiences with "a better understanding of often overwhelming news developments from across the globe."

👇
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2026/why-fact-checking-matters/

#journalism #verification #factchecking

"Lonely young people are likely better off texting a random stranger than talking to a chatbot."

Rosie Thomas for @404mediaco@mastodon.social:

https://www.404media.co/chatgpt-loneliness-study-college-students-random-strangers-texting/

#AI #psychology

"If you're not being mentioned in the places AI crawls, you effectively don't exist."

In this video for DW Tech, Ha Thanh Le Nguyen explains how AI search is changing what we find online:
https://www.dw.com/en/how-ai-search-is-changing-what-we-find-online/video-76726000

#AI #search

"They’re certainly not abandoning #audio, but they’re aware that many young people hear #podcast and think YouTube."

Laura Hazard Owen for Nieman Lab:
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/news-podcasts-are-increasingly-something-you-watch-but-the-daily-still-works-best-as-audio/

...and we're back from the easter break!

With a post on AI, avatars and sign languages.

"For nearly a million Kenyans, silence means exclusion. Terp360 flips the script with AI-driven sign language translation; proving innovation can break the deepest human barriers."

George Mutero for DW:

👇
https://www.dw.com/en/ai-smashes-silence-terp360-bridges-human-gaps/video-75907926

#AI #Avatars #SignLanguage

✨ New *Babylon* #newsletter dropped today!

Our colleague @mirkolorenz@vis.social published Issue No. 10 – which tackles the topic:

“Killing the Bees of Information – Why are news sites blocking the Wayback Machine?”

👉 Read it here: https://www.babylon-newsletter.com/p/babylon-newsletter-issue-10

Subscription is free.

#AI

"What if Tunisia's authoritarian regime had had artificial-intelligence-powered tools that predicted the coming revolution? They could perhaps have prevented other protests, or arrested leaders of a fledgling anti-government movement before it grew any larger."

Cathrin Schaer for DW on how AI changes "conflict forecasting":

https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-using-ai-to-stop-dissent-before-it-even-starts/a-76095344

#AI #data #surveillance

Five clear and useful #charts on the current state of #AI –compiled by Michelle Kim for @mittechreview@flipboard.com:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/13/1135675/want-to-understand-the-current-state-of-ai-check-out-these-charts/

#DDJ

The "Dot Pad" helps blind healthcare worker Tumpa Pal collaborate with colleagues, serve patients – and bring primary care to one of the most isolated regions in India.

Syamantak Ghosh and Subrata Goswami on smart tactile graphics, innovative inclusion, and medical care in the Sundarbans:

https://www.dw.com/en/in-indian-sundarbans-tech-enables-health-care-for-all/video-75731420

#technology #inclusion #healthcare

🌕 "Artemis II represents an important cultural moment for space exploration. We’ve used technology to add an interactive layer to traditional media coverage, designed to inform and inspire (…) audiences by sending them on our guided mission to the Moon and back."

The BBC’s R&D department is at it again.

Claire Buckingham about a project that helps school children explore Nasa's latest moon mission in an immersive way.

👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/articles/2026-04-artemis-moon-space-mission-interactive

#XR #education

The #OSINT navigator by Buried Signals is all about finding the right #tools for your #verification / #Investigation workflow.

The DB is compiled from different toolkits: A crawler checks all sources, adds new tools, flags deprecated ones. The Navigator also adds a structured documentation.

And what's really cool: no hallucinations / BS (apparently) thanks to a reined in #LLM.

👇
https://navigator.indicator.media

"XR hasn't revolutionized journalism. It has quietly expanded what journalism can do." 🌐📍😎

In the latest DW Innovation blogpost, @Olivia_Luise@mastodon.social shares core insights from her master's thesis on 360° and VR journalism – and a couple of things you should know if you want to get started in the field.

👇
https://innovation.dw.com/articles/what-aspiring-vr-journalists-should-know

#VR #XR #360video #immersive #journalism

🤖 "I see a future in which trusted avatars continue to deliver information. Sometimes that avatar will be a real person. Sometimes it will be an AI version of a person, a digital twin, a stylized character, or some other embodied intelligence or entity."

In case you missed Cory Corrine's Nieman Lab Prediction for Journalism 2026:

➡️ https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/the-future-of-news-is-people-bots-and-the-avatars-we-trust/

#AI #Avatars #Information

Remember SPOT?

That's the pretty useful geolocation tool we released a while ago (and continue to develop).

It helps you find specific places anywhere in the world – based on a simple, natural language description, OpenStreetMap data, and thoroughly tested AI algorithms.

The @opencage@en.osm.town community reached out to learn more, and Ruben Bouwmeester was happy to answer their questions.

Follow this link for the full interview:
https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/openstreetmap-interview-dwinnovation

#verification #geolocation #OSINT #OSM #AI

🔊 #Newsletter alert!

#Transcription. #Translation. #Dubbing. #VoiceOvers.

#AI is doing (almost) all of it now. 🤖

*Babylon* – curated by our colleague Mirko Lorenz – explores and explains what that actually means.

For issue No. 1 & free subscription, follow this link:

https://www.babylon-newsletter.com/p/issue-1

🗺️ Who will achieve global dominance in #AI?

For those who didn't catch it: Wesley Rahn’s DW report on American and Chinese strategies in the "AI race" – including a video report on whether Europe can catch up and a map on global AI diffusion.

👇
https://www.dw.com/en/where-is-the-us-china-ai-race-heading-in-2026/a-75608670

Marina Adami on how #AI tools are transforming freelance #journalism:

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/speed-hoaxes-and-mistrust-how-ai-transforming-freelance-journalism

Key insights:

👉 Freelance work is changing, but not disappearing.

👉 Verification and transparency become more important.

(via @reutersinstitute@mas.to)

The AIB International Media Excellence Awards (#TheAIBs) are open for entry.

Submit your outstanding factual content (plenty of formats and platforms) via this website:

https://theaibs.tv

#journalism #awards