Microsoft introduces Content Credentials: receipts from content to reach the roots of misinformation

As 2024 ushers in a record-breaking year of elections worldwide, Microsoft is stepping up its fight against misinformation with expanded access to its Content Integrity tools. These tools can combat the spread of deceptive content, such as deepfakes created with artificial intelligence.

Political campaigns, news organizations, and election officials can now use Content Credentials. These act like digital signatures embedded within online content to verify its authenticity. 

Content credentials are digital receipts from online content, like images, videos, or audio. They act like a “nutrition label” for information, revealing details about its origin and history. Here’s a breakdown of what they tell you:

• Origin: Who created the content? Was it a news organization, political campaign, or individual user?
• Creation details: When and where was the content created?
• AI involvement: Was the content generated by artificial intelligence tools?
• Editing history: Has the content been edited or altered in any way since its creation?

At Microsoft, we deeply believe that healthy democracies depend on healthy information ecosystems. Through this expansion, we are delivering tools these organizations can use to help voters understand the information they encounter online.

Currently, in private preview, the Content Integrity suite offers three key components.

There are:

• An easy-to-use private web application available to political campaigns, news organizations, and election officials so they can add Content Credentials to their owned, authoritative content
• A private mobile application to capture secure and authenticated photographs, video, and audio by adding Content Credentials in real-time from a smartphone, developed in partnership with Truepic
• A public website for fact-checkers and any member of the public to check images, audio, or videos for the existence of Content Credentials

More here.