Thailand

Intent detection, also called intent classification or recognition, is an NLP technique to comprehend the purpose behind user utterances. This paper focuses on Multi-dialect Arabic intent detection in banking, utilizing the ArBanking77 dataset. Our method employs an ensemble of fine-tuned BERT-based models, integrating contrastive loss for training. To enhance generalization to diverse Arabic dialects, we augment the ArBanking77 dataset, originally in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Palestinian, with additional dialects such as Egyptian, Moroccan, and Saudi, among others. Our approach achieved an F1-score of 0.8771, ranking first in subtask-1 of the AraFinNLP shared task 2024.

ACL 2024

MA at AraFinNLP2024: BERT-based Ensemble for Cross-dialectal Arabic Intent Detection

contrastive loss

ensemble

intent classification

workshop paper

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The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) will take place in Bangkok, Thailand from August 11th to 16th, 2024. More information will be announced soon.

In this paper, a description of the system submitted by BFCAI team to the AraFinNLP2024 shared task has been introduced. Our team participated in the first subtask, which aims at detecting the customer intents of cross-dialectal Arabic queries in the banking domain. Our system follows the common pipeline of text classification models using primary classification algorithms integrated with basic vectorization approach for feature extraction. Multi-layer Perceptron, Stochastic Gradient Descent and Support Vector Machines algorithms have been implemented and support vector machines outperformed all other algorithms with an f-score of 49%. Our submission's result is appropriate compared to the simplicity of the proposed model's structure.

BFCI at AraFinNLP2024: Support Vector Machines for Arabic Financial Text Classification

In this paper, we present our dzFinNlp team's contribution for intent detection in financial conversational agents, as part of the AraFinNLP shared task. We experimented with various models and feature configurations, including traditional machine learning methods like LinearSVC with TF-IDF, as well as deep learning models like Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Additionally, we explored the use of transformer-based models for this task. Our experiments show promising results, with our best model achieving a micro F1-score of 93.02% and 67.21% on the ArBanking77 dataset, in the development and test sets, respectively.

dzFinNlp at AraFinNLP: Improving Intent Detection in Financial Conversational Agents

We present an overview of the second edition of the ArAIEval shared task, organized as part of the ArabicNLP 2024 conference co-located with ACL 2024. In this edition, ArAIEval offers two tasks: (i) detection of propagandistic textual spans with persuasion techniques identification in tweets and news articles, and (ii) distinguishing between propagandistic and non-propagandistic memes. A total of 14 teams participated in the final evaluation phase, with 6 and 9 teams participating in Tasks 1 and 2, respectively. Finally, 11 teams submitted system description papers. Across both tasks, we observed that fine-tuning transformer models such as AraBERT was at the core of the majority of the participating systems. We provide a description of the task setup, including a description of the dataset construction and the evaluation setup. We further provide a brief overview of the participating systems. All datasets and evaluation scripts are released to the research community. We hope this will enable further research on these important tasks in Arabic.

ArAIEval Shared Task: Propagandistic Techniques Detection in Unimodal and Multimodal Arabic Content

Detecting propaganda in multimodal content, such as memes, is crucial for combating disinformation on social media. This paper presents a novel approach for the ArAIEval 2024 shared Task 2 on Multimodal Propagandistic Memes Classification, involving text, image, and multimodal classification of Arabic memes. For text classification (Task 2A), we fine-tune state-of-the-art Arabic language models and use ChatGPT4-generated synthetic text for data augmentation. For image classification (Task 2B), we fine-tune ResNet18, EfficientFormerV2, and ConvNeXt-tiny architectures with DALL-E-2-generated synthetic images. For multimodal classification (Task 2C), we combine ConvNeXt-tiny and BERT architectures in a fusion layer to enhance binary classification. Our results show significant performance improvements with data augmentation for text and image classification models and with the fusion layer for multimodal classification. We highlight challenges and opportunities for future research in multimodal propaganda detection in Arabic content, emphasizing the need for robust and adaptable models to combat disinformation.

MemeMind at ArAIEval Shared Task: Generative Augmentation and Feature Fusion for Multimodal Propaganda Detection in Arabic Memes through Advanced Language and Vision Models

This paper describes our participation in the ArAIEval Shared Task 2024, focusing on Task 2C, which challenges participants to detect propagandistic elements in multimodal Arabic memes. The challenge involves analyzing both the textual and visual components of memes to identify underlying propagandistic messages. Our approach integrates the capabilities of MARBERT and ResNet50, top-performing pre-trained models for text and image processing, respectively. Our system architecture combines these models through a fusion layer that integrates and processes the extracted features, creating a comprehensive representation that is more effective in detecting nuanced propaganda. Our proposed system achieved significant success, placing second with an F1 score of 0.7987.

ASOS at ArAIEval Shared Task: Integrating Text and Image Embeddings for Multimodal Propaganda Detection in Arabic Memes

This paper presents our system submitted for Task 1 of the ArAIEval Shared Task on Unimodal (Text) Propagandistic Technique Detection in Arabic. Task 1 involves identifying all employed propaganda techniques in a given text from a set of possible techniques or detecting that no propaganda technique is present. Additionally, the task requires identifying the specific spans of text where these techniques occur. We explored the capabilities of a multilingual BERT model for this task, focusing on the effectiveness of using outputs from different hidden layers within the model. By fine-tuning the multilingual BERT, we aimed to improve the model's ability to recognize and locate various propaganda techniques. Our experiments showed that leveraging the hidden layers of the BERT model enhanced detection performance. Our system achieved competitive results, ranking second in the shared task, demonstrating that multilingual BERT models, combined with outputs from hidden layers, can effectively detect and identify spans of propaganda techniques in Arabic text.

Mela at ArAIEval Shared Task: Propagandistic Techniques Detection in Arabic with a Multilingual Approach

This paper investigates the optimization of propaganda technique detection in Arabic text, including tweets & news paragraphs, from ArAIEval shared task 1. Our approach involves fine-tuning the AraBERT v2 model with a neural network classifier for sequence tagging. Experimental results show relying on the first token of the word for technique prediction produces the best performance. In addition, incorporating genre information as a feature further enhances the model's performance. Our system achieved a score of 25.41, placing us 4th on the leaderboard. Subsequent post-submission improvements further raised our score to 26.68.

Nullpointer at ArAIEval Shared Task: Arabic Propagandist Technique Detection with Token-to-Word Mapping in Sequence Tagging

This paper focuses on detecting propagandistic spans and persuasion techniques in Arabic text from tweets and news paragraphs. Each entry in the dataset contains a text sample and corresponding labels that indicate the start and end positions of propaganda techniques within the text. Tokens falling within a labeled span were assigned ’B’ (Begin) or ’I’ (Inside) tags, ’O’, corresponding to the specific propaganda technique. Using attention masks, we created uniform lengths for each span and assigned BIO tags to each token based on the provided labels. Then, we used AraBERT-base pre-trained model for Arabic text tokenization and embeddings with a token classification layer to identify propaganda techniques. Our training process involves a two-phase fine-tuning approach. First, we train only the classification layer for a few epochs, followed by full model fine-tuning, updating all parameters. This methodology allows the model to adapt to the specific characteristics of the propaganda detection task while leveraging the knowledge captured by the pretrained AraBERT model. Our approach achieved an F1 score of 0.2774, securing the 3rd position in the leaderboard of Task 1.

MemeMind at ArAIEval Shared Task: Spotting Persuasive Spans in Arabic Text with Persuasion Techniques Identification

We present the CLTL system designed for the ArAIEval Shared Task 2024 on multimodal propagandistic memes classification in Arabic. The challenge was divided into three subtasks: identifying propagandistic content from textual modality of memes (subtask 2A), from visual modality of memes (subtask 2B), and in a multimodal scenario when both modalities are combined (subtask 2C). We explored various unimodal transformer models for Arabic language processing (subtask 2A), visual models for image processing (subtask 2B), and concatenated text and image embeddings using the Multilayer Perceptron fusion module for multimodal propagandistic memes classification (subtask 2C). Our system achieved 77.96% for subtask 2A, 71.04% for subtask 2B, and 79.80% for subtask 2C, ranking 2nd, 1st, and 3rd on the leaderboard.

CLTL at ArAIEval Shared Task: Multimodal Propagandistic Memes Classification Using Transformer Models

In recent days, propaganda has started to influence public opinion increasingly as social media usage continues to grow. Our research has been part of the first challenge, Unimodal (Text) Propagandistic Technique Detection of ArAIEval shared task at the ArabicNLP 2024 conference, co-located with ACL 2024, identifying specific Arabic text spans using twenty-three propaganda techniques. We have augmented underrepresented techniques in the provided dataset using synonym replacement and have evaluated various machine learning (RF, SVM, MNB), deep learning (BiLSTM), and transformer-based models (bert-base-arabic, Marefa-NER, AraBERT) with transfer learning. Our comparative study has shown that the transformer model "bert-base-arabic'' has outperformed other models. Evaluating the test set, it has achieved the micro-F1 score of 0.2995 which is the highest. This result has secured our team "CUET_sstm'' first place among all participants in task 1 of the ArAIEval.

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BFCI at AraFinNLP2024: Support Vector Machines for Arabic Financial Text Classification

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