For Rohit Chandra, vice president of engineering at Yahoo, more humans in the loop would help. I see a need in the market to develop standards, he says. "We cant fact-check every story, but there must be enough eyes on the content that we know the quality bar stays high.

Google is also helping fact-checking organisations like Full Fact, which is developing new technologies that can identify and even correct false claims. Full Fact is creating an automated fact-checker that will monitor claims made on TV, in newspapers, in parliament or on the internet.

Initially it will be targeting claims that have already been fact-checked by humans and send out corrections automatically in an attempt to shut down rumours before they get started. As artificial intelligence gets smarter, the system will also do some fact-checking of its own.

For a claim like crime is rising, it is relatively easy for a computer to check, says Moy. We know where to get the crime figures and we can write an algorithm that can make a judgement about whether crime is rising. We did a demonstration project last summer to prove we can automate the checking of claims like that. The challenge is going to be writing tools that can check specific types of claims, but over time it will become more powerful.

What would Watson do?

It is an approach being attempted by a number of different groups around the world. Researchers at the University of Mississippi and Indiana University are both working on an automated fact-checking system. One of the worlds most advanced AIs has also had a crack at tackling this problem. IBM has spent several years working on ways that its Watson AI could help internet users distinguish fact from fiction. They built a fact-checker app that could sit in a browser and use Watsons language skills to scan the page and give a percentage likelihood of whether it was true. But according to Ben Fletcher, senior software engineer at IBM Watson Research who built the system, it was unsuccessful in tests - but not because it couldnt spot a lie.

We got a lot of feedback that people did not want to be told what was true or not, he says. At the heart of what they want, was actually the ability to see all sides and make the decision for themselves. A major issue most people face without knowing it is the bubble they live in. If they were shown views outside that bubble they would be much more open to talking about them.

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Lies, propaganda and fake news: A challenge for our age