Some of the world’s leading technology companies have pledged to help prevent deceptive AI content from interfering in this year’s upcoming global elections.

More than four billion people in over 40 countries are set to vote in elections this year, including in the UK, US, and India.

The “Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections” is a set of eight commitments to deploy technology countering harmful AI-generated content meant to deceive voters.

Signatories, which include Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Google, TikTok, Meta, and LinkedIn, pledge to work collaboratively to detect and address the distribution of fraudulent AI content.

Also promising to drive educational campaigns and provide transparency, the pledge includes a broad set of principles, including the importance of tracking the origin of deceptive election-related content and the need to raise public awareness about misinformation.

Specifically, the accord aims to address digital content consisting of AI-generated audio, video, and images that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provides false information to voters about when, where, and how they can vote.

The eight commitments are:

• Creating and using technology to mitigate risks related to AI-generated election content, including open source tools where appropriate.
• Assessing models in the scope of the Accord to understand the risks they may present to fair elections.
• Seeking to detect the distribution of AI-generated election content on their platforms.
• Seeking to appropriate address this content detected on their platforms.
• Fostering cross-industry resilience to deceptive AI election content.
• Providing transparency to the public regarding how the company addresses these issues.
• Continuing to engage with a diverse of global civil society organisations and academics.
• Supporting efforts to foster public awareness, media literacy, and all-of-society resilience.

The Accord was announced and signed at the Munich Security Conference, by Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Arm, ElevenLabs, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, LinkedIn, McAfee, Meta, Microsoft, Nota, OpenAI, Snap, Stability AI, TikTok, TrendMicro, Truepic, and X.

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“Elections are the beating heart of democracies. The Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 elections is a crucial step in advancing election integrity, increasing societal resilience, and creating trustworthy tech practices,” said Ambassador Christopher Heusgen, Munich Security Conference (MSC) Chairman.

Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum placed misinformation and disinformation – largely aided by AI – to be one of the biggest short term-threats affecting the globe.

“As society embraces the benefits of AI, we have a responsibility to help ensure these tools don’t become weaponized in elections,” said Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft. “AI didn’t create election deception, but we must ensure it doesn’t help deception flourish.”