Rita Francese

Dr. Rita Francese


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

21Years (2006-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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14 July 2023 in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
IAIlaria Amaro
Ilaria Amaro
PBPaola Barra
Paola Barra
AGAttilio Della Greca
Attilio Della Greca
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
CTCesare Tucci
Cesare Tucci
Technological evolution has enabled the development of new artificial intelligence (AI) models with generative capabilities. Among them, one of the most discussed is the virtual agent ChatGPT. This chatbot may occasionally produce fake information, as also declared by the producer OpenAI. Such a model may provide very useful support in several tasks, ranging from text summarization to programming. The research community has marginally investigated the impact that fake information created by AI models has on the users’ perceptions and on their belief in AI. We analyzed the impact of the fake information produced by AI on user perceptions, specifically trust and satisfaction, by performing a user study on ChatGPT. An additional issue is assessing whether the early or late knowledge of the possibility of the tool generating fake information has a different impact on the users’ perceptions. We conducted an experiment, involving 62 university students, a category of users who may employ tools such as ChatGPT extensively. The experiment consisted of a guided interaction with ChatGPT. Some of the participants experienced the failure of the chatbot, while a control group only received correct and reliable answers. We collected participants’ perceptions of trust, satisfaction, and usability, together with the net promoter score (NPS). The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference in trust and satisfaction between the users who early experienced fake information production compared to those who discovered ChatGPT’s faulty behaviors later during the interaction. Also, there is no statistically significant difference among the users who received the late fake information and the control group (no fake information). Usability and the NPS also resulted higher when the fake news was detected in the late interaction. When users are aware of the fake information generated by ChatGPT their trust and satisfaction decrease, especially when they impact on this at the early stage of use of the chatbot. Nevertheless, the perception of trust and satisfaction still remains high, as some of the users are still enthusiastic; others consider a more conscious use of the tool in terms of support to be verified. A useful strategy could be to favor a critical use of ChatGPT, letting young people to verify the provided information. This should be a new way to perform learning activities.

9 July 2023
Verified
Book Chapter
Closed access
PDF file
IAIlaria Amaro
Ilaria Amaro
AGAttilio Della Greca
Attilio Della Greca
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
GTGenoveffa Tortora
Genoveffa Tortora
CTCesare Tucci
Cesare Tucci

24 June 2021 in Complex & Intelligent Systems
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
XYXiaomin Yang
Xiaomin Yang
The number of autism spectrum disorder individuals is dramatically increasing. For them, it is difficult to get an early diagnosis or to intervene for preventing challenging behaviors, which may be the cause of social isolation and economic loss for all their family. This SLR aims at understanding and summarizing the current research work on this topic and analyze the limitations and open challenges to address future work. We consider papers published between 2015 and the beginning of 2021. The initial selection included about 2140 papers. 11 of them respected our selection criteria. The papers have been analyzed by mainly considering: (1) the kind of action taken on the autistic individual, (2) the considered wearables, (3) the machine learning approaches, and (4) the evaluation strategies. Results revealed that the topic is very relevant, but there are many limitations in the considered studies, such as reduced number of participants, absence of datasets and experimentation in real contexts, need for considering privacy issues, and the adoption of appropriate validation approaches. The issues highlighted in this analysis may be useful for improving machine learning techniques and highlighting areas of interest in which experimenting with the use of different noninvasive sensors.

3 May 2021 in Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
MFMaria Frasca
Maria Frasca
MRMichele Risi
Michele Risi
GTGenoveffa Tortora
Genoveffa Tortora
Melanoma is considered the deadliest skin cancer and when it is in an advanced state it is difficult to treat. Diagnoses are visually performed by dermatologists, by naked-eye observation. This paper proposes an augmented reality smartphone application for supporting the dermatologist in the real-time analysis of a skin lesion. The app augments the camera view with information related to the lesion features generally measured by the dermatologist for formulating the diagnosis. The lesion is also classified by a deep learning approach for identifying melanoma. The real-time process adopted for generating the augmented content is described. The real-time performances are also evaluated and a user study is also conducted. Results revealed that the real-time process may be entirely executed on the Smartphone and that the support provided is well judged by the target users.

20 September 2023
Verified
Conference Paper
Open access
ACAndrea Antonio Cantone
Andrea Antonio Cantone
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
RSRaffaele Sais
Raffaele Sais
OSOtino Pio Santosuosso
Otino Pio Santosuosso
ASAurelio Sepe
Aurelio Sepe
Giuliana VitielloGiuliana Vitiello
Giuliana Vitiello

19 September 2024 in Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
CTCesare Tucci
Cesare Tucci
AGAttilio Della Greca
Attilio Della Greca
GTGenoveffa Tortora
Genoveffa Tortora
RFRita Francese
Rita Francese
Biometric systems are largely based on Machine Learning (ML) algorithms which are often considered as a black-box. There is a need to provide them with explanations to make their decision understandable. In this paper, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review aiming at investigating the present adoption of explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques in biometric systems. By examining the biometric tasks performed by the selected papers (e.g., face detection or face spoofing), the datasets adopted by the different approaches, the considered ML models, the XAI techniques, and their evaluation methods. We started from 496 papers and, after an accurate analysis, selected 47 papers. Results revealed that XAI is mainly adopted in biometric systems related to the face biometric cues. The explanations provided were all based on model-centric metrics and did not consider how the end-users perceived the explanations, leaving wide space for the biometric researchers to apply the XAI models and enhance the explanation evaluation into an HCI perspective.