Latest News | Two Teams from India Working on Solutions for Countering Deepfakes Reach 2021 Microsoft Imagine Cup Finals
Get latest articles and stories on Latest News at LatestLY. Tech giant Microsoft on Wednesday said two teams from India -- that have worked on cybersecurity solution to counter deepfakes and assistive technology for people with low vision -- will represent the country at the global finals of the innovation challenge.
New Delhi, Mar 10 (PTI) Tech giant Microsoft on Wednesday said two teams from India -- that have worked on cybersecurity solution to counter deepfakes and assistive technology for people with low vision -- will represent the country at the global finals of the innovation challenge.
The first virtual edition of Imagine Cup saw 353 team entries and 10,000 individual entries across India for the event. The India winners - Team Detectd from GH Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur, and Team Intelli-Sense from the Vellore Institute of Technology - will proceed directly to the world finals of Imagine Cup.
The two winning innovations were focused on cybersecurity to counter deepfakes (Team Detectd) and assistive technology for people with low vision (Team Intelli-Sense), a statement said.
Imagine Cup is a global competition designed to empower students to apply artificial intelligence and other technologies to solve some of the world's most critical social and sustainability problems.
The participants competed to solve global challenges across four categories: Earth, Education, Health, and Lifestyle. Microsoft had joined hands with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) for the India edition of Imagine Cup. The finals of Imagine Cup India were judged by an eminent panel, including Microsoft India President Anant Maheshwari, Vedantu co-founder and Product Head Pulkit Jain, and NSDC CEO and MD Manish Kumar.
"As India makes rapid strides in tech led transformation, the impact and scale of this transformation will depend on how we empower our most valuable asset, our youth," Maheshwari said.
He added that Microsoft's Imagine Cup is a commitment to create a culture of innovation in students, enabling them to use technology for solving some of the world's most critical social and sustainability problems.
"It was truly inspiring to see the passion, collaboration and innovation of students across the country and I wish our winning teams luck as they prepare for the global stage," he said.
The four finalists from India, who were the winners in each category received a Surface Go 2 device each: Earth (Team DENSITY), Education (Team CodeCapture), Health (Team Intelli-Sense) and Lifestyle (Team Detectd).
At the world finals, the top four teams will be awarded USD 10,000 each for the best solution in each category. The world champion will take home the Imagine Cup and win an additional USD 75,000 along with a mentorship opportunity with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
"Imagine Cup provides opportunities to the youth in our country to compete with, and learn from, their peers across the globe. We are proud to witness the passion, efforts and dedication of these young competitors and congratulate them on their journey so far and wish them the very best for all their future endeavours," NSDC CEO and MD Manish Kumar said.
Team Detectd's focused on building a quick and easy solution to counter the growing disinformation and fake news.
Their innovation focuses on a product (website) that detects AI forgery and determines if the media uploaded is a deepfake or not. The team used AI and computational neural networks to detect deepfakes with 96 per cent accuracy.
Team Intelli-Sense's project sought to solve the difficulties faced by people who have low vision in perceiving and understanding their surroundings, by harnessing the power of AI and cloud technology.
The solution proposes to build a multi-lingual mobile application through which a visually impaired person can click a picture of what they need to perceive, be it the environment around them or a piece of text which they need to read without having a tactile writing system like Braille around.
The native mobile application takes advantage of the Azure Cloud API and App Services to harness the power of cloud and AI technology to solve for the purpose.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)