“MindBugs Discovery” PROJECT
Do you believe there’s more to uncover about how false information spreads and influences our world?🔥
If you answer yes, you’re in for a treat with this new interview. In it, you’ll discover how TechWave Development, a beneficiary of NGI Search, is making strides in understanding and combating disinformation through its project: MindBugs.
Are you curious to learn how they help experts and journalists analyse and visualise disinformation trends across Europe?
Join us and learn everything about this initiative, which was born to tackle one of today’s most pressing issues.🚀
Welcome to the world of MindBugs!
Can you introduce yourself and your company, and explain what makes you different?
Our company, TechWave Development, was established in 2021. Our first projects specialised in customised administrative platforms for businesses.
One year after our inception, we launched the MindBugs project, an initiative to delve into the complexities and implications of disinformation. Unlike traditional approaches focusing on blocking or filtering content, the MindBugs project seeks to enhance our understanding of disinformation.
What services or products do you offer?
Our project began with the MindBugs AR Game and the MindBugs AI & Art Exhibition, both part of a cultural endeavour designed to reveal the structure of disinformation artistically.
Following this, we developed MindBugs Discovery, a tool for experts to identify and study recurring European disinformation patterns.
What milestones have you achieved so far since your project launch?
Through the NGI Search project, we have successfully developed an open-source web tool called MindBugs Discovery that allows disinformation to be analysed and understood. Our search engine enhances the investigative process by understanding the context of queries, allowing journalists and researchers to find the most relevant debunked claims efficiently. This capability reduces the time spent searching and increases the time available for detailed reporting.
Additionally, our tool features geographical spread and timeline visualisations. These intuitive graphs let users see how disinformation trends vary across regions and evolve, turning complex data into actionable insights.
The MindBugs Tool also incorporates graphics and an interactive 3D graph environment. This 3D graph feature provides a dynamic way to explore data, revealing connections and patterns in the disinformation landscape and making complex analyses feasible and engaging.
Our MVP has been presented and tested with journalists at international venues such as the IPI World Congress 2024 in Sarajevo and OW2Con 2024 in Paris.🤩
💫Through the NGI Search project, MindBugs Discovery has set a new standard in the tools available for journalists and researchers dedicated to uncovering and understanding disinformation.💫
What are your goals for the middle/long-time future?
Looking ahead to the middle and long-term future, our primary goal is to introduce MindBugs Discovery into the market within large organisations focusing on informational security. By targeting entities deeply engaged in maintaining and safeguarding information integrity, we aim to become an essential tool in their toolkit against disinformation.
Beyond the initial market of informational security, we plan to explore additional markets where our tool’s analytical capabilities can be equally valuable. These include the retail, education, and public policy sectors, where understanding text patterns in large datasets is essential.
Through strategic expansions and by continually enhancing our tool’s features, we aim to broaden our impact and help more organisations in various fields explore and understand text data effectively.
Do you have any advice for those who are looking for public funding?
I’m not sure if I’m the best person to offer advice on this topic. We were fortunate to be part of the NGI Search program, which was an excellent fit for our project 🚀
I recommend NGI Search and other similar projects as they provide substantial support and resources. However, for specific advice on securing public funding, it feels like a lot comes down to finding a program that aligns well with your goals.
MindBugs – The story
To enhance engagement with those interested in combating disinformation, MindBugs has developed an augmented reality mobile application which allows users to tackle disinformation interactively by destroying MindBugs—vivid, artistic representations of fake news characterised by elements that facilitate their rapid online spread.
These MindBugs are designed to be both colourful and appealing, making them easily noticeable and widely recognisable. Each MindBug symbolises a unique artistic take on fake news in this app.
The app’s visuals, including every asset, button, and game object, are crafted by local artists, ensuring originality and exceptional quality in both design and narrative.
The exhibition was an interactive space for users to understand better the nature of manipulating reality, structured into three distinct levels of abstraction:
📌 First Level – Digital & Classic Art: This foundational level features digital paintings that merge traditional artistic techniques with modern digital tools. Artists employ graphics tablets and conventional approaches to blend classic and contemporary art forms. This stage, developed by Radu-George Caravateanu, introduces the fluidity between real and virtual expressions.
📌 Second Level—Mixed Reality: This level uses mixed reality to deepen engagement, including the Transparency installation and interactive gaming experiences. In Transparency, created by Ioana Chereș, participants encounter a holographic deepfake of themselves, which speaks misinformation tailored through an analysis of their demographic data, confronting them with the unsettling power of digital manipulation. This level uses holography and real-time data integration to blur the lines between the participant’s identity and the misinformation they are presented with.
📌 Third Level – The Metaverse: This ultimate level of abstraction is centred around Virtual Reality (VR), where participants fully immerse themselves in a metaverse created through VR technologies. This immersive environment, crafted by Radu-Matei Caravateanu, allows users to navigate and interact within a completely artificial yet convincingly real setting, exploring how digital realms can replicate or distort reality.
Each level of the exhibition invites more profound reflection on the impact of digital technologies on our perception of truth and reality, offering a progressive immersion from digital art to a fully enveloping virtual universe.
As we started to gather data on disinformation for the MindBugs project, we realised that this information could be valuable to specialists worldwide.
💫This insight was the catalyst for creating MindBugs Discovery, transforming our initial data into a comprehensive tool that serves our project and aids global efforts in understanding and combating disinformation.
