Meet the 22-year-old tech crusader who has launched a war on fake news

Lyric Jain's intuitive app is powered by Extended Intelligence (EI) machine learning, NLP and human oversight to empower citizens to spot misinformation on any topic in India

Now here's a typical clickbait headline if you ever saw one: "Desperate engineer creates fact-checking app after Brexit and POTUS debacle."

Yet, that is exactly what a well-meaning techie from United Kingdom did when he was dismayed by the breakdown in civic and political discourse during the Brexit debate and the 2016 presidential election in the US. His aim: to curb the widespread dissemination of misinformation designed to compromise the democratic process and influence the ill-informed voter.

Earlier this month, UK-based firm Logically announced the launch of its intuitive app powered by Extended Intelligence (EI) machine learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and human oversight to empower citizens to identify fake news and misinformation on any topic in India, available on Android and the web.

In July 2017, while studying at MIT, Lyric Jain conducted preliminary market research which highlighted the need for tools that allow users to better navigate the complex information landscape. He then went on to design a machine-learning algorithm that detects local fallacy, inaccuracies and bias, and created the Logically platform.

When 22-year-old Jain walks in to a room, slightly apologetic for underestimating the traffic snarls in Mumbai, the first thing one notices is a towering personality with a very gentle voice.

“India is probably the most complicated case we could have picked to release our first public product, so it is a trial by fire,” says the founder and CEO of Logically, as he discusses the launch of the app in India specifically around election time.

Fact-checking is currently the need of the hour across the globe with internet giants such as Facebook and Google having created an alternate ecosystem to propagate information. This, in turn, has forced the giants themselves to invest in fact-checking technology. Facebook’s Whatsapp has partnered with local media skilling startup, Proto, to run the fact-checking service to control misinformation. Google has gone so far as to launch a program to educate journalists across the country through outreach initiatives.

“While the world is concerned about detecting fake news, we have got that under our belt. Our challenge is to ensure users understand that a piece is fake, and why it is so, instead of believing it because it has gone viral,” Jain adds.

Originally from Mysore, Jain moved to the UK at age 12. He has always had a keen business acumen and started his first business venture at age 16 when he designed and developed the ABS secure lock, which has now become an industry standard.

During this time, he also studied economics and finance at Harvard University before going on to pursue a Masters in Engineering at the University of Cambridge. His move into machine-learning was facilitated by a term at MIT, where he delved further into computer science, inspiring the Logically platform.

Since launch, Logically has been flooded with posts from users across the country uploading links and posts, requesting the app to verify their authenticity. “ People are sharing posters they saw pasted on light posts because they now have a platform for it,” said Jain.

The algorithm behind the app checks various parameters such as publicly available data sources, metadata related to stories, previous content patterns of the author, authenticity of the author and publication and even the nature of how a story is propagated online. The app had to be tweaked for use in India as many detection parameters that worked in UK, where it was first launched in 2017, differed from those in India.

The biggest call they had to take was to ensure that at present the app was launched only in English language in India. While the algorithm can still detect all other parameters (like propagation pattern) in a regional language story, it refrains from fact checking the content of a vernacular story.  The team is however seeking out vernacular partners.

Jain works with a diverse team of professionals from different sectors and skill sets such as software engineers, pharma execs, post doctorates, media persons, psychologists, finance and even defence professionals. Logically currently has teams in Bengaluru and UK. Jain clarifies that he only brings his “AI expertise “ to the table and leaves the experts to do the journalistic fact-checking. “ The scale of demand can be gauged from the fact that we have gone from five to 69 people within the past year.”

The company currently works in a B2C model and is moving towards premium and freemium revenue models in both its primary geographies. It is exploring options for content and enterprise fact-checking as a service platform across finance and publishing, to use its fact-checking expertise.

The company has been funded partly by MIT’s incubator and in part by a motley group of angel investors, apart from finances from Jain’s successful venture in lock making. It is in the process of seeking out more investments soon. “ More than the investments, however, we are looking for the right fit with someone who understands the philosophy of Logically.”