Winners of two flagship digital-literacy competitions, the First Neurocontent Cup and the Anti-Fake Championship, were announced on the opening day of the International Youth Festival in Yekaterinburg, drawing more than 40,000 applicants combined.
Two Competitions, One Theme
The First Neurocontent Cup and the Anti-Fake Championship, both organised under the Presidential Platform “Russia – Land of Opportunities,” were held at the Yekaterinburg-EXPO venue on the festival’s opening day. Around 200 participants took part directly, creating AI-generated video content and independently verifying the authenticity of digital materials, out of more than 40,000 total applications received across both projects.
In the First Neurocontent Cup, teams built short videos around one of two creative themes. In the “Neuroexcursion: Ural Character in Motion” category, which saw teams turn traditional Ural crafts and artwork into short AI-generated films, Moscow’s KRASAVIN AI STUDIO placed first, followed by Yaroslavl’s Neuroschool and a Perm-based duo. In the “Fairy Tales Without Borders” category, which brought together characters from different cultural traditions, Moscow’s KMG team took first place, ahead of a team from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and another Moscow entry. The winning team received a 500,000-rouble contract with the ANO “Development of Artificial Intelligence Technologies” for future content production.
Mikhail Gusev, Marketing Director of the Presidential Platform, framed the two competitions as complementary sides of digital literacy, using AI tools meaningfully while also learning to question what appears on screen. Gennady Guryanov, Director of the hosting ANO, noted the competition’s growing international ambitions, pointing to its inclusion in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s action plan and a follow-up hackathon planned for November.
Verifying Fact from Fiction
The Anti-Fake Championship, organised alongside fact-checking project Lapsha Media, tested participants’ ability to distinguish authentic material from manipulated or AI-generated content. Winners were Sofya Snezhnytskaya of Nizhny Novgorod, Artem Sargsyan of St. Petersburg, and Vladimir Larionov of Tyumen, with results judged not only on accuracy but on participants’ ability to justify their conclusions and identify reliable verification methods.
Ivan Serov of ANO “Dialogue Regions” addressed the festival on the growing challenge of deepfakes, arguing that digital verification skills are now essential for ordinary users, not just professional fact-checkers.
Sources: IYF-2026 Media Center; media materials via TASS photo hosting
