A service that spots and highlights mistruths spoken by politicians in realtime sounds like a dream tool for better informed democracy. Incredibly that tool is available (for US citizens anyway) thanks to the Washington Post. The prototype app, entitled TruthTeller, has demonstrated how the technology can understand politicians (no mean feat) and fact check their statements against a database of known political facts.

The app is being supported by the Knight Foundation prototype fund, and its task is made easier by preexisting databases of political facts which can be indexed and recalled to verify claims. It's an incredbly potent application of the Microsoft Audio Video Indexing Service (MAVIS), one of the leading real time transcription technologies. When a section of a speakers text correlates (truthfully or deceitfully) to a fact a link is created so that viewers can access the original source.

The impressive technological integration aside we think that this is one tool whose true potency lies in the changes it could evince. Washingtog Post potical editor Steven Ginsberg sees the apps worth in how it “shortens the time between the falsehood and the truth. The app developers imagine that in the near future augmented reality alike lie-busting overlays could add a sorely needed element of data-verified truth checking to political demos.