Soon after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, local photographers began documenting the destruction of cultural sites to help preserve the country’s heritage and collect evidence for restitution. But a spread of faked war-related images was causing a problem: People couldn’t be sure which photos were real. 

That prompted the photographers to use a new tool to show their pictures weren’t “deepfakes” — AI-generated content that realistically resembles existing people, places or events in an inauthentic way. The prototype led to Microsoft’s Content Integrity Suite of tools designed to bring more transparency to online content.  

With global elections expected to draw a record 2 billion voters this year, several political, elections and media organizations are now using the tools to attribute their work, improve transparency, instill trust and ward off disinformation. Supporting a more trustworthy information ecosystem with responsible AI tools and practices is just one way Microsoft is fighting harmful deepfakes. 

This post is part of Microsoft’s Building AI Responsibly series, which explores top concerns with deploying AI and how the company is addressing them with its responsible AI practices and tools.  

“The repercussions of deepfakes can be incredibly severe. They’re a form of cognitive hacking that changes your relationship with reality and how you think about the world,” says Andrew Jenks, Microsoft director of Media Provenance.  
 
Jenks chairs the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an organization that Microsoft co-founded to develop an open technical standard for establishing the provenance — or the source and history — of digital content, including AI-generated assets.  

Manipulated content is nothing new, and sometimes it’s clearly satire or comedy. But the rise of generative AI is making it easier for people with bad motives to spread disinformation that can lead to fraud, identity theft, election interference and other harms. Details like attribution and captions often disappear when content is shared, making it harder for people to know what to trust. 

Knowing the origin and tracing the history of content can help people be more informed and less vulnerable to deception, Jenks says. Microsoft’s tools include an application, currently in private preview, for creators and publishers to add Content Credentials to their work, or certified metadata with details like who made the content, when it was made and whether AI was used. Part of C2PA’s technical standard, Content Credentials are attached to photo, video and audio cryptographically so any subsequent editing or tampering can be detected more easily.  

Because the metadata is invisible, Microsoft also provides a public Content Integrity Check tool and a web browser extension for consumers to scan for credentials and review provenance information. People can also look for a Content Credentials icon on images and videos on platforms such as LinkedIn.  

“Content Credentials provide an important layer of transparency, whether or not AI was involved, to help people make more informed decisions about content they share and consume online,” Jenks says. “As it becomes easier to identify content sourcing and history, people may become more skeptical of material that lacks specific provenance information.” 

Microsoft uses its Content Credentials tooling in its own image-generating AI products — Designer, Copilot, Paint and select models in Azure OpenAI Service — to disclose that AI was used, when the image was created and other details. Other responsible AI controls to deter deepfake abuse include blurring faces of people in photos uploaded in Copilot.