The 2024 Fake-a-thon was held in April 2024. View information on winners below, and watch this page for details about our next Bias-a-thon.
Sponsored by the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible AI (CSRAI), the inaugural Fake-a-thon challenges participants to generate fake news stories and better understand the impact of generative AI. Through this challenge and engagement with CSRAI, participants can collaborate with Penn State's brightest minds in AI to foster awareness and critical thinking about misinformation in the digital age.
2024 Fake-a-thon
The 2024 Fake-a-thon was held Monday, April 1, to Friday, April 5, 2024, and was open to all members of the Penn State community with an active @psu.edu email address.
Read about the 2024 Fake-a-thon Winners
The competition was broken into two stages:
Stage 1: Fake News Submission
Participants used generative AI tools like Chat-GPT or Microsoft Copilot to create and submit fake news stories. Event organizers also submitted genuine news stories to the competition. Participants could submit as many stories as they’d like, and stories could be about any topic, such as the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and other contentious topics like climate change and health and medicine.
Stories were required to be “verifiably fake” with public information that could be fact-checked.
Stage 2: Fake News Detection
Participants who did not submit entries in stage one were invited to scrutinize entries to figure out if the stories from Stage 1 were fake or real. Prizes were given to the participants who submitted a fake news story that fooled the most people, as well as the individuals who accurately identified the highest percentage of fake news stories.