We’re committed to supporting democratic processes around the world

As people head to the polls, many will turn to AI products alongside the tools they’ve historically relied on to find information on elections. On Google Search and Gemini app, we prioritize surfacing authoritative election information directly within results and responses such as voting requirements, key dates, real-time results and more, with direct links to official resources.

In some instances, our AI-powered features provide richer context by pulling from multiple helpful sources. Across all our products, these tools are designed to be reliable, neutral, and offer a range of perspectives when asked for an opinion. To protect information quality, these features are tied directly into our core Search ranking and safety systems, where we constantly update our protections and use AI tools like SpamBrain to defend against low quality content across our platforms.

Connecting users with reliable information also means helping them spot AI-generated content and showing how a piece of content was created and modified over time. That is why we have implemented SynthID, our imperceptible watermarking technology, across Google’s AI-generated content including text, audio, images, and video. Users can verify if an image, video, or audio was generated with or edited by Google AI in Search and Gemini by asking a question such as: “Was this created by Google AI?” or “Is this AI generated?” We are working with industry partners to expand the use of SynthID technology beyond Google so that even more content generated by AI is watermarked.

This builds on features such as the AI labels on YouTube and our work with trusted testers on Backstory to make detection tools faster and more reliable. We also require political advertisers to disclose when they use AI in election ads, and YouTube creators must disclose when they use AI to alter or generate photorealistic content. YouTube also uses automated detection to identify and label such content that has not been disclosed by creators.

To increase transparency across the web, we joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and C2PA Content Credentials. This technology provides a secure record of a file’s origin and edit history, enabling users to see if content was captured by a camera, modified by software, or generated by AI. We also added verification for C2PA Content Credentials to Gemini app, to easily check if content is an unaltered original from a camera or if it has been modified, and by what tools. This will soon be available on Search and Chrome as well. We’ve incorporated C2PA into recent Pixel smartphones, where the Pixel 10 was the first smartphone to provide Content Credentials for images in its native camera app.

As a part of our work to drive election ads transparency, advertisers are required to complete our election ads verification process and follow the Political content policies and Ads policies as a whole. We were the first tech company to require election advertisers to prominently disclose when their ads include realistic synthetic content that’s been digitally altered or generated, including by AI tools. These policies build on our ads political content policies and longstanding policies against using manipulated media, such as deepfakes, to mislead people.

Elections are frequent targets for cyberattacks and coordinated influence operations. Drawing on years of experience supporting elections around the globe, our Trust & Safety team and Google Threat Intelligence Group work around the clock to identify and disrupt this sort of activity. For example, on any given day, the team is tracking more than 270 targeted or government-backed attacker groups from more than 50 countries, consistently publishing findings to keep the public and private sectors vigilant and informed. The team also helps organizations build strong election security programs and improve their defenses. We offer comprehensive tools to proactively check for security breaches and track emerging online threats.

To keep our platforms safe from harmful content, we enforce our policies, including YouTube’s Community Guidelines, consistently for everyone. These policies apply to all forms of content, including content relating to elections — regardless of the political viewpoints expressed, the language the content is in, or how the content is generated.

For example, content that misleads people on voting requirements or key dates is not allowed on YouTube. We have specific YouTube election misinformation policies that prohibit certain types of content relating to free and fair democratic elections, like voter suppression, false claims about candidate eligibility, and incitement to interfere with democratic processes. When an account violates these policies, we take swift action, ranging from restricting specific features to account termination. Sometimes, content that would otherwise violate our Community Guidelines may stay on YouTube when it has Educational, Documentary, Scientific, or Artistic (EDSA) context — for example, content like congressional or parliamentary proceedings, campaign speeches, or debates over ongoing government actions.

Election and government officials, campaigns and journalists face increased cyber risks, which is why we make available our most advanced security tools at no cost. This includes:

• Advanced Protection Program (APP): Our strongest set of cyber protections is now integrated with passkeys for enhanced security.  Through our partnership with  Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) in the US and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) globally, we provide campaigns and election management bodies  with the security tools they need to stay safe online, including tools to rapidly configure Google Workspace's security features. 
• Project Shield: This free program protects election websites from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and legitimate traffic surges. 
• Likeness Detection: On YouTube, our likeness detection tools are available to all adult users, including government officials, journalists, and political candidates. This tool helps creators find content on YouTube where their face appears to be altered or generated by AI. If any relevant content is found, creators can review and decide what to do, including requesting removal through the privacy complaint process.
• Privacy Protections:  If you find private or sensitive information on Search, you can request to remove it from search results.
• Digital skills training: The Google Civics Training Center provides campaigns and civic entities guidance on safely managing their digital presence, including how to use AI tools for civics and get verified on YouTube.
  

Democracy thrives on authoritative, reliable information. At Google, supporting elections is a core part of our responsibility to our users and society. We’ll continue to build on our efforts to support the integrity of democratic elections around the world–deliberately, responsibly, and in partnership with others.