Microsoft welcomes the opportunity to file this fifth report on our compliance with the commitments of the strengthened 2022 EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, covering the second half of 2024. At Microsoft, we are committed to instilling trust and security across our products and services, and across the broader web. We recognise that information integrity is a key element in empowering users to access the information they need and freely express themselves. We also recognize that there is not a one size fits all approach to this work, and instead there needs to be a whole of society strategy that recognizes that not all services or platforms are the same and that there are a variety of efforts that can be effective in improving the information environment and empowering the public.

One opportunity is to continue employing AI as a resource in assisting and streamlining important work in detecting and assessing cyber enabled foreign influence operations. The harmful use of AI can also pose challenges in the information integrity space, including improved efficiency of deceptive and malicious images and videos, as malicious threat actors continue to build their capacity to create highly deceptive content efficiently. This requires continuous improvement and response to changing tactics. Microsoft’s services are fully committed to utilising best in class tools and technology to help mitigate the risks of its services being misused.

Microsoft is taking a cross-product, whole-of-company approach to ensure the responsible implementation of AI. This starts with our Responsible AI Principles. Building on those principles in June of 2022, Microsoft released our Responsible AI Standard v.2 and Information Integrity Principles to help set baseline standards and guidance across product teams. Recognizing that there is an important role for government, academia and civil society to play in the responsible deployment of AI, we also created a roadmap for the governance of AI across the world as well as creating a vision for the responsible advancement of AI, both inside Microsoft and throughout the world, including specifically in Europe. For more information on Microsoft’s commitment to Responsible AI and ongoing internal and external efforts, we encourage you to review our Responsible AI hub, which offers a range of information, tools, and resources related to the ethical and responsible use of AI technologies. It includes detailed information about Microsoft’s internal Responsible AI processes and tools which can be used to responsibly develop and deploy AI products, including our first annual Responsible AI Transparency Report. In addition, Microsoft recently released a white paper focused on policy steps that can be taken to reduce the harms of abusive AI-generated content.

Serving as a leader in AI research, we are committed to proactively publicize our threat detection efforts for the benefit of the AI community, regulators, and broader society. As such, we have adopted six focus areas to combat the harmful use of deceptive AI:

Additionally, we will continue to build upon these approaches to Responsible AI. For example, recognizing both the enormous potential for generative and other forms of AI to transform the world of work in positive ways and the potential risks AI presents in that context, LinkedIn published its framework of Responsible AI Principles, which is inspired by and aligned with Microsoft’s Responsible AI Principles. LinkedIn provides more details on these principles in our response to Commitment 15.

Since our last report, Microsoft has continued to work with EU Member States and EU institutions to protect elections from cyber enabled influence operations by malicious threat actors. As part of that work, Microsoft and LinkedIn, along with 25 other companies, continued efforts to meet the commitments of the Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections (Tech Accord). We believe the success of the Tech Accord and our work together have contributed to the limited impact of deceptive AI-generated election content throughout the elections across the European Union in 2024.

Meeting the Tech Accord’s commitments made it more difficult for malicious threat actors to use legitimate tools to create deceptive AI-generated election content, while simultaneously simplifying the process for users to identify authentic content. To meet its Tech Accord commitments, Microsoft moved forward with several important initiatives that are detailed further in this report. For example:

Microsoft is committed to advancing information integrity and believes that including content credentials is an important driver for this. We were a founding member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). To achieve transparency, support information integrity, and empower our users, we are leveraging C2PA’s “content credentials” open standard across several products. For example, since 15 May 2024, content containing the “Content Integrity” technology has been automatically labelled on LinkedIn, with users beginning to see the “Cr” icon on images and videos that contain C2PA metadata.

During the reporting period, Microsoft continued piloting Content Integrity Tools, which allowed users to add content credentials to their own authentic content. Designed as a pilot program primarily to support the 2024 election cycle and gather feedback about Content Credentials-enabled tools, during the reporting period of this report, the tools were available to political campaigns in the EU, as well as to elections authorities and select news media organizations in the EU and globally. These tools included a partnership and collaboration with fellow Tech Accord signatory, TruePic. Announced in April 2024, this collaboration leveraged TruePic’s mobile camera SDK enabling campaign, election, and media participants to capture authentic images, videos and audio directly from a vetted and secure device. Called the “Content Integrity Capture App” (an app that makes it easy to directly capture images with C2PA enabled signing) launched for both Android and Apple and can be used by participants in the Content Integrity Tools pilot program.

Beyond our commitment to combat deceptive use of AI during the electoral process, we implemented additional actions safeguarding candidates, election campaigns, election authorities, and voters:

Microsoft continued its work with other trusted third-parties as part of a larger effort to empower Microsoft users to access the trusted information they are seeking. Microsoft also announced $2M in societal resilience grants with OpenAI and several organizations benefited from the grants during this reporting period. Additionally, WITNESS, received a grant to improve journalists’ ability to counter AI threats to elections. Training sessions were conducted ahead of the 2024 elections in Ghana, Georgia, and Venezuela, reaching 250 global participants. Microsoft's collaboration with WITNESS also includes co-leading the Deepfakes Rapid Response Force.

These initiatives underscore Microsoft's commitment to fostering a resilient and informed society in the age of AI. These grants build on an existing effort by Microsoft to support media, AI, and information literacy globally. We have continued our work with leading news and media literacy nonprofits, including the News Literacy Project (NLP), a collaboration led by The Trust Project on the Trust Indicators, and Verified, to develop campaigns built on industry research and best practices. Microsoft provided funding for the research and development of public awareness and education campaigns and supported partners with threat intelligence insights, technical expertise, and increased visibility through in-kind ad space on Microsoft platforms. Microsoft also worked to reach young learners with dynamic and entertaining content that builds knowledge and skills. For instance,

Microsoft has subscribed to the Code of Practice with the following services:

As a company, we continued our efforts during the reporting period to empower users to better understand the information they consume across our platforms and products. For example, Bing compiled a specialized dataset of European Parliament election related queries in different EU languages for use by the research community and to support transparency; researchers can apply using the form found here. Over the course of the next reporting period, we will continue to make this information transparent and public. Specifically, we will continue to focus on the following areas:

Unless stated otherwise, data provided under this report covers a reporting period of 1 July 2024 to 31 December 2024 (“Reporting Period”).