German Marshall Fund Launches Elections Content Credentials Repository
Washington, DC – The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) announces today the launch of its 2024 Elections Content Credentials Repository, an online archive of provenanced coverage of major 2024 elections to serve as a reliable archive of verified election content.
The Repository comes out of a partnership among GMF, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Mexican photojournalist agency Obturador Photo Agency, to conduct the first demonstration of content authenticity technologies to combat deep fakes and disinformation in a global elections context.
“AI safety is not only about building guardrails on frontier models, but fortifying the environments they’re used in. As democracies stare down the barrel of a post-truth era, and content of unknown provenance explodes, we need innovative ideas to tell fact from fiction,” noted Lindsay Gorman, Managing Director of GMF’s Technology Program. “The Repository brings new technologies and cross-sector partnerships together to build this architecture and strengthen transparency and accountability for the AI age.”
The project brought together media and technology companies to implement tools by Microsoft and Truepic that promote trust and transparency in institutions and elections.
“Authenticity and transparency in the digital content that organizations rely on is critical to decision making in today’s AI world. The German Marshall Fund’s Elections Content Credentials Repository represents a meaningful step forward in disclosing synthetic media and safeguarding authentic content across elections,” said Mounir Ibrahim, Truepic’s Chief Communications Officer and Head of Public Affairs. “We are proud to collaborate with GMF and its partners to facilitate this effort, providing the tools necessary to verify and preserve the integrity of digital content worldwide. By combining innovative technology with interdisciplinary partnerships, we can help increase transparency online and across sectors, including elections.”
As part of the demonstration, CBC News used Truepic’s verification tool to verify and sign images taken of the Mexican, Canadian, Indian, and US elections and provide a tamper-evident certificate of authenticity.
“It is critical that media organizations like ours implement content authenticity technologies to address the growing disinformation challenges presented by AI,” said Tessa Sproule, Director of Metadata and Information Management at CBC. “These innovative technologies will only make us better at what we do and help to increase trust with our viewers.”
During this year’s Mexican presidential election and the presidential transition period, Obturador leveraged Microsoft’s Content Integrity tools to add authenticity indicators to images, and trained its photographers on Microsoft’s tools to increase transparency into the images captured of the elections processes.
“As a women-owned media agency covering an election cycle with female candidates, we were cognizant of the fact that disinformation disproportionately affects women,” said Veronica Ramírez Robledo, Co-director of Obturador. “Implementing content authenticity technologies has been an effective way to proactively fight back against false information that was being circulated to discredit both the electoral process and the candidates themselves.”
"The need for reliable and verifiable content has never been more important, and we are proud to have supported Obturador in maintaining the integrity of its election coverage," said Ginny Badanes, General Manager of Microsoft's Democracy Forward Program. “Content provenance is ultimately about enhancing trust and transparency, and we are excited to see initiatives, like the establishment of this Repository, that leverage innovative technologies to uphold democratic values and bolster public confidence in electoral processes."
The online repository underscores the importance of interdisciplinary partnership in building innovative responses to the new threats facing our democratic institutions and values. As a successful demonstration of archived verified election content, the launch of the Repository represents the next step in the efforts of GMF and its partners to advance the adoption of democracy-affirming technologies in newsrooms around the world.