Microsoft rolls out authentication tools to combat AI-powered election disinformation
A private preview of Microsoft’s Content Integrity Tools is now available to political parties and campaigns in the EU and news organizations worldwide.
The tools are designed to make it easier for organizations to inform voters about the origin of content, the company said in the announcement.
This year will see parliamentary elections in the EU and national or regional elections in about half of Europe’s countries. At the same time, generative AI creates an entirely new way to generate diverse content at high speed.
The technology can be used for propaganda or disinformation. Microsoft knows this all too well, as its chatbot has been proven to spread false information about election results.
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Microsoft’s Content Integrity Tools are designed to help organizations such as political campaigns and newsrooms authenticate images, audio, and video. To that end, Microsoft supports the now widely adopted Content Credentials standard.
It provides information about who created or published the content, where and when the content was created, whether it was generated by AI, and whether the image has been edited or manipulated since it was created.
When people see media with valid content credentials, they can be confident that the content was actually published by the newsroom, campaign, or party, Microsoft said.
Microsoft’s Content Integrity Tools consist of three components:
1. A partner-accessible web application for political campaigns, news organizations, and election officials to add content credentials to their content.
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2. A private mobile application developed in partnership with Truepic to capture secure and authenticated photos, videos, and audio by adding content credentials in real time from a smartphone.
3. A public website for fact-checkers and the general public to review images, audio, and video for content authenticity.
Interested news organizations can request access to the Content Integrity Preview through the Journalism Hub. Political stakeholders from the EU, UK, and US can contact Microsoft’s Campaign Success Team.
One criticism of the CC standard is that it is relatively easy to remove metadata from content. Also, there is still no reliable way to detect AI-generated text.
