Today internet safety startup Elv.ai announced a €500,000 investment,
The Slovak startup combines AI with human moderators to make the internet safer for debate. It also protects the credibility of media and public institutions on their social networks.
It was initially founded as a non-profit project by the Slovak communications agency New School Communications in response to hybrid warfare and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In response to high demand last year, the agency spun off the service into a separate startup, elv.ai, to help protect clients’ social networks from misinformation, hoaxes, and fake profiles and scams.
Because of the dynamics and context of language, Elv.ai combined AI with human moderators who control the AI and recognise possible linguistic nuances not picked up by technology.
Since the project’s launch in March 2022, elv.ai has hidden or deleted more than 2,500,000 hateful or disinformation comments out of more than 16,000,000 and has identified more than 5,000 fake profiles in response to hybrid warfare and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Thanks to the investment, Elv.ai has launched its product in the Czech Republic, where it protects discussions and social networks of Prima TV and the Economia publishing house.
Since its launch in Slovakia, elv.ai has recorded over 2,500,000 hateful or disinformation comments out of more than 16,000,000 and has identified over 5,000 fake profiles.
In the Czech Republic, out of more than 2 million monitored comments on 44 profiles, up to 504,000 were hateful content, which is 24 percent.
According to Jakub Šuster, co-founder and CEO of elv.ai:
“We perceive that the media space has changed significantly and that the need to protect online discussions and social networks from hatred is growing.
In our native Slovakia, we monitor and moderate the discussions of roughly one-third of the media market and help several significant institutions that want to control the posts of their online discussions without misinformation, hoaxes or hate speech.
We are pleased that even in the Czech Republic, we have quickly found conscious media houses that consider it their duty to protect their fans and users from hateful and misinformation, both human and artificial.”
Today’s funding comes from the CB ESPRI Impact One investment fund, which focuses on supporting companies and non-profit organisations with a positive social impact in protecting human rights in education, training and research of information services.
Miroslav Beblavý, CEO of the CB ESPRI Impact One Fund shared:
“We decided to invest in elv.ai because cultivating the online space improves the social atmosphere.
As an impact fund, we are interested in the financial return and the positive impact on society. We welcome efforts to use technology to mitigate misinformation content on social media, which should serve to connect people, not spread hate.
We see the potential of the elv.ai tool not only in the Czech and Slovak markets but also elsewhere in the European market.”
Lead image: Elv.ai co-founders: Ľudovít Ďurman, Jakub Šuster, Milan Dubec, Gabriel Tóth. Photo: uncredited.
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