EXCLAIM: An Explainable Cross-Modal Agentic System for Misinformation Detection with Hierarchical Retrieval

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Yin, Zhang, Zhengxuan, Wang, Fuling, Luo, Yuyu, Xiong, Hui, Tang, Nan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wu, Yin
Zhang, Zhengxuan
Wang, Fuling
Luo, Yuyu
Xiong, Hui
Tang, Nan
author_facet Wu, Yin
Zhang, Zhengxuan
Wang, Fuling
Luo, Yuyu
Xiong, Hui
Tang, Nan
contents Misinformation continues to pose a significant challenge in today's information ecosystem, profoundly shaping public perception and behavior. Among its various manifestations, Out-of-Context (OOC) misinformation is particularly obscure, as it distorts meaning by pairing authentic images with misleading textual narratives. Existing methods for detecting OOC misinformation predominantly rely on coarse-grained similarity metrics between image-text pairs, which often fail to capture subtle inconsistencies or provide meaningful explainability. While multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) demonstrate remarkable capabilities in visual reasoning and explanation generation, they have not yet demonstrated the capacity to address complex, fine-grained, and cross-modal distinctions necessary for robust OOC detection. To overcome these limitations, we introduce EXCLAIM, a retrieval-based framework designed to leverage external knowledge through multi-granularity index of multi-modal events and entities. Our approach integrates multi-granularity contextual analysis with a multi-agent reasoning architecture to systematically evaluate the consistency and integrity of multi-modal news content. Comprehensive experiments validate the effectiveness and resilience of EXCLAIM, demonstrating its ability to detect OOC misinformation with 4.3% higher accuracy compared to state-of-the-art approaches, while offering explainable and actionable insights.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06269
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EXCLAIM: An Explainable Cross-Modal Agentic System for Misinformation Detection with Hierarchical Retrieval
Wu, Yin
Zhang, Zhengxuan
Wang, Fuling
Luo, Yuyu
Xiong, Hui
Tang, Nan
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Misinformation continues to pose a significant challenge in today's information ecosystem, profoundly shaping public perception and behavior. Among its various manifestations, Out-of-Context (OOC) misinformation is particularly obscure, as it distorts meaning by pairing authentic images with misleading textual narratives. Existing methods for detecting OOC misinformation predominantly rely on coarse-grained similarity metrics between image-text pairs, which often fail to capture subtle inconsistencies or provide meaningful explainability. While multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) demonstrate remarkable capabilities in visual reasoning and explanation generation, they have not yet demonstrated the capacity to address complex, fine-grained, and cross-modal distinctions necessary for robust OOC detection. To overcome these limitations, we introduce EXCLAIM, a retrieval-based framework designed to leverage external knowledge through multi-granularity index of multi-modal events and entities. Our approach integrates multi-granularity contextual analysis with a multi-agent reasoning architecture to systematically evaluate the consistency and integrity of multi-modal news content. Comprehensive experiments validate the effectiveness and resilience of EXCLAIM, demonstrating its ability to detect OOC misinformation with 4.3% higher accuracy compared to state-of-the-art approaches, while offering explainable and actionable insights.
title EXCLAIM: An Explainable Cross-Modal Agentic System for Misinformation Detection with Hierarchical Retrieval
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06269