Launch Event by eurAV

Representatives from groups as diverse as aged care, multicultural support, the medical profession and the Irish Voluntary Association gathered at the offices of EurAV, Ireland's partner in the DiSeRA project, this week to hear about the tools and training that have been developed to support digital and media literacy for seniors. The size of the turnout indicates an interest in finding solutions to this rapidly growing problem as artificial intelligence makes fraud more convincing and misinformation harder to detect.

Members of the Drogheda Support for Older People group were at the event, which was headlined by multi-award winning national Irish journalist Bill Tyson. They saw such value in what the DiSeRA consortium of partners brought together that they requested a workshop with their members to help equip them with the information and skills to walk the tightrope between fake and real.

"The event went really well," said EurAV Executive Director Declan Cassidy. “With such deep concern about the harm that can be done to older people trying to bridge the digital divide, the participants were there to find answers to questions they've clearly had for a long time. EurAV is centered around a team of media professionals and it is often quite difficult for us to detect false information as the leaps and bounds in AI technology have made it really easy to create convincing but fake content.”

EurAV will join three other partners in delivering media literacy workshops for older people over the next few weeks.