Michael Foster


2026

Disinformation and advanced generative AI content pose a significant challenge for journalists and fact-checkers who must rapidly verify digital media. While many NLP models exist for detecting signals like persuasion techniques, subjectivity, and AI-generated text, they often remain inaccessible to non-expert users and are not integrated into their daily workflows as a unified framework. This paper demonstrates the Verification Assistant, a browser-based tool designed to bridge this gap. The Verification Assistant, a core component of the widely adopted Verification Plugin (140,000+ users), allows users to submit URLs or media files to a unified interface. It automatically extracts content and routes it to a suite of backend NLP classifiers, presenting actionable credibility signals, AI-generation likelihood, and other verification advice in an easy-to-digest format. This paper will showcase the tool’s architecture, its integration of multiple NLP services, and its real-world application for detecting disinformation.