Meet your Check-Mate!

Overview

Check-Mate is a digital fact-checking companion, designed as a Chrome extension, that empowers users to verify the accuracy of claims encountered on the web. The extension leverages fact-checking databases and scholarly sources to provide users with valuable insights into the credibility of highlighted text.

Key Features

• Text Highlighting:

  • Users can use the extension just by highlighting text on a web page.

• Fact-Checking Options:

  • Users can choose to fact-check the highlighted claim against political/current events fact-checking databases or scientific and scholarly sources.

• Accuracy Probability:

  • The extension provides information on how likely the claim is to be accurate.

• Source Attribution:

  • Users are presented with a source that the accuracy probability is based on.

Project Goals

We wanted to build an app that could use AI to empower people with a safeguard against the dangers of misinformation in the modern world. This tool can be beneficial to everyone but especially students, whether in elementary school or university.

Team

• Aadit Bennur (https://github.com/abennur33)
• Sahil Shaik (https://github.com/sahilshaik123)
• Jaidev Parhar (https://github.com/jaidevparhar)
• Henry Lee (https://github.com/LofiTea)

How to Use

1. Highlight Text:

   • Select a piece of text on a web page.

2. Use Check-Mate:

   • Right-click on the highlighted text and choose the "Check-Mate" option.

3. Fact-Checking Options:

   • Select either political/current events fact-checking databases or scientific and scholarly sources.

4. View Results:

   • The extension provides information on the accuracy probability and the source it is based on.

Installation

1. Download:

   • Clone or download the Check-Mate repository to your local machine.

2. Load Extension:

   • Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/.
   • Enable "Developer mode" in the top right corner.
   • Click "Load unpacked" and select the folder containing the extension files.

3. Usage:

   • Highlight text on a web page, right-click, and select the "Check-Mate" option to initiate fact-checking.

Technical Specifications

This extension uses an HTML/CSS/JS framework for the popup menu while using a custom Flask-based API to provide the back-end computing. Based on HTTP inputs, the custom API uses two separate NLP models and web scraping to compare a claim against various databases. The confidence score is then returned back to the extension along with the source info it was based on.

Built With

• beautiful-soup
• chrome
• css
• flask
• html5
• javascript
• natural-language-processing
• python