Microsoft Bing

Report March 2025

Submitted
Commitment 18
Relevant Signatories commit to minimise the risks of viral propagation of Disinformation by adopting safe design practices as they develop their systems, policies, and features.
We signed up to the following measures of this commitment
Measure 18.2 Measure 18.3
In line with this commitment, did you deploy new implementation measures (e.g. changes to your terms of service, new tools, new policies, etc)?
Yes
If yes, list these implementation measures here
Bing regularly reviews and implements mitigations, safeguards, and safe design considerations to help proactively address, prevent and mitigate harms arising from potential misuse of generative AI search experiences, including viral propagation of content, and provides updates to public facing transparency documents, such as How Bing Delivers Search Results. However,  Bing features do not allow users to post or share content within Bing so virality is not possible on the platform itself.

Do you plan to put further implementation measures in place in the next 6 months to substantially improve the maturity of the implementation of this commitment?
Yes
If yes, which further implementation measures do you plan to put in place in the next 6 months?
Bing is regularly reviewing and evaluating its policies and practices related to features and adjusts and updates policies as needed. Bing continues to explore additional potential research opportunities and partnerships related to the spread of harmful misinformation and/or disinformation.

Measure 18.2
Relevant Signatories will develop and enforce publicly documented, proportionate policies to limit the spread of harmful false or misleading information (as depends on the service, such as prohibiting, downranking, or not recommending harmful false or misleading information, adapted to the severity of the impacts and with due regard to freedom of expression and information); and take action on webpages or actors that persistently violate these policies.
QRE 18.2.1
Relevant Signatories will report on the policies or terms of service that are relevant to Measure 18.2 and on their approach towards persistent violations of these policies.
Unlike social media services, for which this Commitment appears primarily oriented, search engines do not typically cause or facilitate the viral propagation of disinformation, as they do not allow users to post or share content directly on the service. Please see How Bing delivers search results and Microsoft Bing Webmaster Guidelines for an overview of how Bing Search designs its algorithms to deliver high authority and highly relevant content while minimizing the negative impact of spam and less credible information sources. Bing Search’s ranking algorithms and related policies are intended to address deceptive tactics intended to manipulate the algorithms and are discussed in more detail at QREs 14.1.1 and 14.1.2. Bing Search features such as news carousels as well as the other features and policies discussed throughout this report further help minimize the risk of viral propagation of misinformation through Bing Search.

Bing’s suggestions features offer possible search queries to users to facilitate a more efficient search experience. While search suggestions are not directly tied to virality of content, Bing Search also undertakes measures to help ensure it does not inadvertently lead users to misleading or other harmful content through suggestions. Specifically, Bing Search uses a combination of proactive and reactive algorithmic and manual interventions to prevent the display of search suggestions that could lead to low authority content. 

Bing Search also provides a tool for users to provide feedback on suggestions they encounter.  The feedback tool is shown on page 108 of our PDF report.

Clicking “Feedback on these suggestions” allows users to provide specific feedback on individual suggestions on several bases, as seen on page 108 of our PDF report.

There is generally no risk of viral spread of generated content through Bing and Bing’s generative AI experiences because Bing does not allow users to directly post or otherwise share content on the platform. Bing also takes steps to prevent the service from being used to create content or images that might be shared on other platforms through a multipronged approach. This approach includes terms of use and a code of conduct, classifiers, filters, bespoke metaprompts, and robust reporting mechanisms designed to mitigate the risk of potential misuse of the platform. Supplemental Terms addressing AI powered search experiences in Bing, for example, prohibit users from using the service to generate fraudulent or misleading information, including the creation of disinformation. Bing’s ranking and relevance systems for search, which are an essential component to answering user questions, work to ensure that high authority content is returned first in search results in traditional search and in chat.  Where Bing’s systems flag that a user’s prompt or generated output may result in low authority or misleading information, the system will take steps to mitigate that possible harm through solutions, such as not returning generated content to the user, diverting the user to a different topic, or redirecting the user to traditional search. Users who encounter problematic content can report concerns via Feedback or Report a Concern tools.  

SLI 18.2.1
Relevant Signatories will report on actions taken in response to violations of policies relevant to Measure 18.2, at the Member State level. The metrics shall include: Total number of violations and Meaningful metrics to measure the impact of these actions (such as their impact on the visibility of or the engagement with content that was actioned upon).
Bing Search does not have data relevant to this SLI. Users come to Bing Search with a specific research topic in mind and expect Bing Search to provide links to the most relevant and authoritative third-party websites on the Internet that are responsive to their search terms. Bing Search does not have a news feed for users of user content, allow users to post and share content within Bing, or otherwise enable content to go “viral” on Bing. See response to SLI 14.2.1 for relevant metrics.