Google unveils new tools to support India elections, curb AI-generated content

Google on Tuesday announced new measures to support the general elections in India, claiming to provide high-quality information to voters, safeguard its platforms from abuse and help people navigate AI-generated content.

In the run-up to elections, the company is collaborating with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to enable people to easily discover critical voting information on Google Search - such as how to register and how to vote - in both English and Hindi.

Google requires all advertisers who wish to run election ads on our platforms to undergo an identity verification process, provide a pre-certificate issued by the ECI or anyone authorised by the poll panel for each election ad they want to run where necessary and have in-ad disclosures that clearly show who paid for the ad.

"Additionally, we have long-standing ads policies that prohibit ads from promoting demonstrably false claims that could undermine trust or participation in elections," said the company.

The company has also begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini AI will return responses.

Also, every image generated through Google products has embedded watermarking with Google DeepMind's 'SynthID', said the company.

Soon, YouTube will begin to require creators to disclose when they have created realistic altered or synthetic content, and will display a label that indicates for people when they're watching this content.

Moreover, "we have information panels that indicate funding sources from publishers that receive public or government funding, and information panels giving topical context for topics prone to misinformation".

Google said it is enforcing policies and using AI models to fight abuse at scale.

"We rely on a combination of human reviewers and machine learning to identify and remove content that violates our policies. Our AI models are enhancing our abuse-fighting efforts, while a dedicated team of local experts across all major Indian languages are working 24X7 to provide relevant context," the company informed.

The Google News Initiative Training Network and the Fact Check Explorer tool have helped enable newsrooms and journalists to deliver reliable, fact-checked updates to debunk misinformation.

Additionally, ahead of the General Election, Google is supporting Shakti, India Election Fact-Checking Collective, a consortium of news publishers and fact checkers in the country.