Between democracy skills and the regulation of tech giants – Viadrina’s first Fake News Festival

“don’t ask ai – ask a professor” – the glittering sticker was everywhere at the festival: handed out at the reception, laid out at workshops, stuck around campus and proudly worn on shirts and laptops. Given the impressive number of experts from a wide range of fields, visitors did not actually need to ask artificial intelligence in order to make progress in discussing the pressing questions of our time: What harm do fake news cause, and how can we counter them? Are there even more important societal challenges hidden behind the dominant topic of AI?

Can we still distinguish between AI and reality? And does it even matter?

Real or AI? Festival visitors encountered this guessing game again and again. Looking at photos, videos and texts, they puzzled over the question: how am I supposed to recognise the difference any more? Dr Jonas Fegert, who among other roles is head of the Digital Democracy & Participation research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, offered a surprisingly straightforward piece of advice during a panel on deepfakes: “If something seems strange to you, trust your gut feeling.” From his research, he knows full well that there are fake video contents that can only be exposed using highly sophisticated technology – for example, by measuring the breathing and pulse of the person in the video. There is no cure-all method for people to identify fakes, not least because the technology is improving at a rapid pace. On the other hand, many users are also misled by so-called cheapfakes that are actually quite obvious. “There is often a discrepancy: you know something is not right. That is something we need to practise,” said Jonas Fegert.

Practising precisely this critical approach was one of the aims of the festival programme, which the organising team around Prof Dr Charlotte Köhler and Ira Helten deliberately designed for a broad audience, from school pupils to pensioners and from researchers to practitioners. “Whether you like AI or not, we all come into contact with AI-generated content. Seventy per cent of all online content is AI-generated or AI-manipulated,” Charlotte Köhler emphasised at the opening of the festival. This explosive increase in such content and its widespread reach was also identified as problematic by legal scholar Ramak Molavi Vasse’i in her keynote on possible AI regulation. “We can no longer trust the tools built into our own bodies,” she said, referring to the ever-improving quality of AI-generated content.

Are we letting tech giants off too easily?

For Ramak Molavi Vasse’i, calls for greater media literacy do not go far enough when it comes to dealing with AI. Instead of looking to users to solve the problems created by AI, she argues that developers and corporations should be held accountable. “The burden of regulation should lie where the responsibility lies – and where the profit lies,” she said in her keynote, while also admitting that reality is far removed from this ideal. One reason for this is that the corporations were significantly involved in shaping the labelling requirements that will apply in the EU from August 2026. She therefore advocates for “slow AI”, in which the pace of development is slowed down so that control mechanisms can be tested. She also calls for untenable applications – such as those used to create nude images – to be banned, business models to be regulated and the privileges of social media platforms to be reviewed.

The demand for more regulation was also made abundantly clear during the panel on deepfakes. Theresia Crone, who herself has been affected by sexualised deepfakes and campaigns for stronger regulation, said during the discussion: “I would like to see more courage from us as a society in standing up to the platforms. They profit from the spread of disinformation and from the fact that our data are not secure.” Viadrina legal scholar Prof Dr Nella Sayatz stressed that in cases such as those of Theresia Crone or Collien Fernandez, calls for changes to criminal law do not go far enough. Victims often primarily want “it to stop” and for images or videos not to be disseminated any further. “This is about platform responsibilities and legal regulations in order to achieve a rapid effect,” said Nella Sayatz. Victim protection, she argued, must be at the centre of legal debates.

Are we focusing on the right questions?

Theresia Crone also pointed out that 95 per cent of deepfakes are pornographic content and that 99 per cent of them affect girls and women. She therefore considers a societal debate about sexual violence against girls and women to be more central than the debate about AI. The activist thus touched on an idea that came up repeatedly throughout the festival: is AI the problem, or does it reveal and amplify the major challenges and divisions in today’s societies?

This idea also arose in the workshop led by Franziska Liebetanz, co-head of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Viadrina. Together with the engaged participants, she discussed the topic “Everything fake? Why write and read?” Her clear answer was: “For me, writing and reading skills are also democracy skills.” In light of ChatGPT and similar tools, when the abolition of seminar papers is being discussed, she believes this is the wrong path: “After all, a term paper has more functions than simply testing knowledge! I ask myself how I can get my students to engage deeply with discourses, to reflect and to take on different perspectives.” If AI is now overturning all forms of teaching and assessment, while education policy and university leaderships are hopelessly lagging behind developments, this points to problems that existed even before AI: “AI exposes the weaknesses in the education system.”

What are the take aways of the Fake News Festival?

Despite all the concerns and criticism, many of the festival’s dozens of events were characterised by a hands-on spirit and offered pointers on how to deal with AI in an active and self-confident way. Theresia Crone emphasised the importance of critical thinking: “That is the basis for all AI skills. What helps against fake news is self-efficacy – starting with children and young people – and democratic skills.”

Alongside many thought-provoking insights, materials and new contacts, festival visitors also took away the realisation that disco balls, dance music in lecture theatres and tinsel do no harm when spending three days engaging with the major, thought-provoking societal questions of our time. “This topic does not belong only in lecture theatres; it belongs on the streets, in the spaces in between, everywhere in the city,” said Viadrina Vice-President Prof Dr Jan-Hendrik Passoth when opening the Fake News Festival. Viadrina, he said, has a clear position that academia must take responsibility. “The Fake News Festival is a wonderful example of that,” Passoth said.