The US-based artificial intelligence (AI) driven start-up Logically has appointed Baybars Örsek as its new vice president of fact checking. He will focus on scaling and growing Logically’s fact checking capabilities into new regions, as well as promoting knowledge sharing and collaboration across the fact checking community.
 
Prior to Logically, Örsek served as the executive director of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) and international programming at the Poynter Institute. Before joining the IFCN, he founded Dogruluk Payi (Share of Truth), a political fact-checking organisation and Veri Kynagi, an open data platform in Turkey.  He also organised Global Fact 6 in Cape Town in 2019 and Global Fact 9 in Oslo in 2022, as well as the two virtual Global Facts in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. During his time as the director of the international fact-checking network at Poynter, Örsek c secured more than $ 20 million to support fact-checking efforts around the world, according to a statement by Logically. 
 
Logically is known for providing AI-assisted fact checking services to newsrooms and social media platforms. The company claims that these services verify any doubts and images that its partners might find questionable quickly and supports both topic and event-driven fact checking. Logically’s fact checking offering is used by Meta and TikTok.

On his new role, Örsek said, “Fact checking plays an increasingly important role in a world where misinformation can originate from nation-state adversaries, cynical domestic campaigns, or from groups pursuing financial gain. Harnessing AI means we can augment each fact-checker's expertise while helping them to intervene quickly and efficiently to reduce harms done by mis and disinformation.” 
 
“My priorities are to continue investment in our regional teams, which includes expanding the reach of Logically’s fact checking offering to even more regions, including Asia-Pacific, Africa, and further into Europe. As online harms continue to grow, there is also a need to bring the community closer together. No company or platform has all the answers, and it is only through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and closer regulatory alignment that we can keep up with the pace of increasingly sophisticated threats,” he also added. 
 
Lyric Jain, founder and CEO of Logically, said, “I’m delighted to welcome Baybars to Logically during such an exciting time in our growth journey. It’s no secret that fact checking and tackling mis and disinformation has gathered an increasing amount of attention over recent years, and Baybars has been at the forefront of the industry from very early on.”