Bing takes a multifaceted approach to protecting election integrity and regularly updates its processes, policies, and practices to adapt to evolving risks, trends, and technological innovations. The approach may include: (1) defensive search interventions; (2) regular direction of users to high authority, high quality sources; (3) removal of auto suggest and related search terms considered likely to lead users to low authority content; (4) partnerships with independent organizations for threat intelligence on information manipulation, civic integrity and nation state affiliated actors to inform potential algorithmic interventions and contribute to broader research community; (5) special information panels and answers to direct users to high authority sources concerning elections and voting; (6) internal working groups dedicated to addressing company-wide election initiatives; (7) establishing special election-focused product feature teams; (8) conducting internal research on content provenance and elections; (9) evaluating and undertaking red-team testing for generative AI features with respect to elections; (10) ensuring Responsible AI reviews for all AI features; (11) undertaking comprehensive risk assessments related to elections and electoral processes; (12) developing and continuing to improve targeted monitoring both for web search and Bing generative AI features; (13) restricting generative AI responses for certain types of election-related content; (14) leveraging blocklists and classifiers in generative AI experiences to restrict generation of images or certain types of content concerning politicians and certain election-related topics (15) integrating information on political parties, candidates, and elections from local election authorities (including in the EU) or high authority third party sources to inform defensive interventions and election-related product mitigations; and (16) regularly evaluating whether additional measures, metrics, or mitigations should be implemented. These measures are integrated into Bing, Copilot Search, and Bing Image Creator and Bing Video Creator, along with the additional safeguards discussed throughout this report.
In addition, we offer Microsoft AccountGuard, a security service designed to enhance protections for organizations involved in democratic processes and civil society. The program provides an extra layer of cyber threat monitoring and notification of nation-state actors targeting high-risk customers who enroll. AccountGuard is available in 40 countries, including 23 European Union Countries: Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. The service is also offered to candidates for the EU Parliament from any member nation.
