FACTORA AI

Artificial Intelligence for Climate Information Integrity

Factora AI is CitiPlat’s artificial intelligence-powered fact-checking and climate disinformation system.

Developed by IPS Academy/CitiPlat, Factora AI is at the core of our mission to protect the integrity of public information on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development.

Its purpose is simple: detect misleading information, verify claims, understand how disinformation spreads and provide citizens, journalists, universities and decision-makers with reliable evidence.

Factora AI was first presented at COP30 in Belém as a prototype capable of detecting climate disinformation in real time. It emerged from years of CitiPlat research into the origins, mechanisms and impact of climate misinformation and disinformation, particularly in Latin America and the Global South.

Today, Factora AI represents the technological backbone of CitiPlat’s work on information integrity.

From detection to verification

Factora AI is designed to monitor and analyse information circulating across digital media, news environments and public debate.

Using artificial intelligence, natural language processing and structured analysis, the system can help identify potentially misleading claims, recurring narratives and emerging disinformation patterns.

But detection is only the first step.

Factora AI connects potentially misleading content with scientific evidence, trusted institutional sources, academic research and professional fact-checking methodologies. Its purpose is not simply to label information as true or false, but to provide the evidence, context and sources needed to understand why a claim is reliable, misleading, unsupported or false.

How Factora AI works

Factora AI is being developed around an integrated information-integrity process:

Monitor: identify emerging climate claims, narratives and potentially misleading content across news, digital platforms and other public information environments.

Detect: use AI-assisted analysis to identify signals associated with misinformation, manipulation, distortion and coordinated narratives.

Verify: compare claims with scientific literature, institutional data, authoritative sources and existing fact-checking evidence.

Analyse: map narratives, themes, actors and patterns to understand how climate disinformation develops and circulates.

Explain: transform verification into transparent, accessible fact-checks, explainers and evidence-based journalism.

Alert: provide journalists, researchers and partner organisations with early-warning signals when significant disinformation narratives emerge.

Learn: build a continuously expanding knowledge base on climate disinformation that strengthens future detection and research.

AI with human oversight

Factora AI does not replace journalists, scientists or fact-checkers.

Artificial intelligence helps process large volumes of information and identify signals that would be difficult to detect manually. Verification and editorial judgement remain subject to human oversight.

This human-in-the-loop approach combines the scale and speed of artificial intelligence with scientific evidence, journalistic standards and editorial responsibility.

Transparency, traceability of sources and responsible use of algorithms are fundamental principles of the system.

A multilingual and global approach

Climate disinformation crosses borders, languages and platforms.

Factora AI was conceived with an initial focus on Spanish and Portuguese-speaking information environments and Latin America, where CitiPlat and its partners have developed extensive research and institutional networks.

Its architecture is designed to progressively expand into a multilingual global system capable of identifying both international narratives and locally specific forms of disinformation.

This approach is particularly important in the Global South, where access to reliable scientific information can be uneven and where environmental journalists, activists and local communities are often especially exposed to information manipulation.

Factora AI + AIUNCA

Factora AI is also conceived as a technological resource for AIUNCA — the International University Agency for Environmental News and Communication, the international network developed from CitiPlat together with universities and university media.

Through AIUNCA, scientific knowledge, university expertise, journalism and artificial intelligence can operate within the same information ecosystem.

Factora AI can detect and analyse questionable narratives. Universities and scientific communities can provide knowledge and evidence. Journalists and university media can investigate, verify and communicate the findings. Local communities can contribute context and knowledge from the territories where climate impacts are experienced.

The result is a distributed model of fact-checking and information integrity that combines technology, science, journalism and local knowledge.

Beyond fact-checking

Climate disinformation is rarely limited to an isolated false statement.

It can manufacture doubt, distort scientific uncertainty, undermine trust in institutions, discredit climate solutions or create the perception that action is useless or impossible.

For this reason, Factora AI goes beyond traditional claim verification.

Its ambition is to identify the narratives, mechanisms and information networks that generate confusion before they become dominant.

This makes Factora AI both a fact-checking instrument and an observatory of the climate information ecosystem.

Information as a public good

CitiPlat was created around a fundamental principle: reliable information is a public good.

Disinformation creates confusion. Confusion produces paralysis. Paralysis prevents informed decisions and collective action.

Factora AI turns that principle into an operational capability.

Detect the signal. Verify the evidence. Expose the manipulation. Restore context. Enable informed action.

CitiPlat

Climate Information Integrity & Fact-Checking

Beyond Confusion. Inspire Action.

Curbing disinformation with UNESCO

FACTORA AI