« We want to give everyone access to a raw word, without editorial filter » – Liberation
Will AI save us from disinformation? It is the bet of Raphaël-David Lasseri. For seven years this doctor in theoretical physics has developed technological solutions at the crossing of AI and information. In 2018, the former student of ENS-Paris Saclay created Magic Lemp, a tool doped with algorithms that aims to be apolitical. This Deep Tech company today brings together 20 researchers and engineers who support both businesses and public institutions such as Naval Group, the National Gendarmerie and the Senate, as well as private groups like Siparex. Today, she reflects with several French media on the challenges of coverage of the 2027 presidential election.
In 2022, you launched « pluralism », an artificial intelligence tool that analyzes in real time the speeches of nearly 3,000 public figures. How do you exercise your algorithm?
The information sphere is complex. We started with the analysis of the written texts and then we attacked the hardest point that are the videos. During the 2022 presidential election, we were able to master two important complexities. Firstly, the accent of candidate Jean Lassalle who was misunderstood by the algorithm, this allowed us to better take into account regional particularisms. Our second difficulty was the chronicles of Nicolas Canteloup. He particularly imitates the president, especially by « doubling » real videos! Its imitations served us as effective training and prefiguration in our current fight against deepfakes. Today, we extend our analysis to other countries such as Germany, the United States and Uruguay by managing other languages than French.
Isn’t this harvesting work and disinformation analysis already that of journalists?
Our tool is not there to replace journalists. We want to give everyone – whether journalists, political or simple citizens – access to raw data, without editorial filter. Concretely, a youtubeur or an editorialist takes up in one of his videos a sentence from the President of the Republic. The person looking at the content does not necessarily have access to the context of the reported words. Our goal is to be able to go back to sources in their exhaustiveness. We are convinced that sharing this information can allow citizens to get out of their information bubbles and help strengthen our democracy.
In anticipation of the 2027 elections precisely, in what frame of the media like BFM TV, M6 and France Info call on you?
During the electoral periods, the audiovisual media must guarantee equality and equity of the speech time of the candidates. However, we have observed a gap of up to 30 % between manual accounts and those carried out by the algorithm. In this case, it is the machine that was the most reliable … To go further, our system also responds to the decree of the Council of State by analyzing not only the interventions of politicians, but also those of chroniclers, by analyzing the content of speeches and not only speaking times.
How can your technology help fight foreign interference?
Our AI systems help to identify foreign influence strategies by revealing narrative anomalies, therefore content, and coordinated diffusion networks through real -time analysis of discourses and positions.
