Since its introduction, the ANSAcheck system has repeatedly worked as designed.
De Alessandri highlights the issues ANSA, along with other prominent global media organizations, faced in the early days of the war in Ukraine, when their websites were cloned to spread fake news about the war in Ukraine. The blockchain solution made it easy for readers to identify that such stories did not actually originate from ANSA, helping to protect its reputation.
For De Alessandri, this is the primary benefit of the EY OpsChain solution. “Blockchain protects our brand and our reputation, which are our main assets,” he says. “It’s not about achieving a competitive advantage. I don’t want it to be a competitive advantage – I want all content creators to introduce EY OpsChain Notarization, because fighting against fake news is a real problem for everybody. It’s a problem for democracy, it’s a problem for the government, it’s a problem for the people.”
He is also keen to stress that the blockchain solution cannot in itself eradicate fake news. “It’s about reliability,” he explains. “It shows that we are the ones publishing this news, and therefore people can rely on the information because of our reputation.”
ANSA’s peers and competitors were initially sceptical about the use of blockchain in journalism, but validation came in the shape of a paper published by the Blockchain Center of Excellence at the University of Arkansas (pdf), which told the story of the development of ANSAcheck and looked at the lessons other companies seeking to build blockchain-based solutions could learn from ANSA’s experience. This led to enquiries from academics and others who wanted to know more about the solution and helped to validate ANSA’s pioneering initiative.
New applications
ANSA has also found new applications for EY OpsChain Notarization. One is to protect itself from piracy and misuse of its newswires by using blockchain to log registrations, so that ANSA can quickly see who actually has the right to distribute its stories. Another is to provide hard evidence in lawsuits that may be brought against the agency; for example, in cases of alleged breaches of privacy laws or publishing incorrect information. EY OpsChain Notarization makes it straightforward for ANSA to ascertain whether a given article was published as presented and, if not, to mount a defense.
A third application, which ANSA was starting to think about even before the blockchain solution was adopted, is in artificial intelligence (AI). One of the most controversial aspects of AI is the material that such systems use to “train” themselves on, particularly when that material includes copyrighted or sensitive information.
A law currently being discussed by the Italian Parliament, and which ANSA has been consulted on, includes a proposal for blockchain to be used for watermarking information, so that it is possible to see when it has been accessed by AI as part of the training process.