• AI-enabled deception now permeates our online lives. • There are the high-profile cases you may easily spot, like when White House officials recentlyshareda manipulated image of a protester in Minnesota and thenmockedthose asking about it. • Other times, it slips quietly into social media feeds and racks up views, like the videos that Russian influence campaigns arecurrentlyspreading to discourage Ukrainians from enlisting. • It is into this mess that Microsoft has put forward ablueprint, shared withMIT Technology Review, for how to prove what’s real online. • An AI safety research team at the company recently evaluated how methods for documenting digital manipulation are faring against today’s most worrying AI developments, like interactive deepfakes and widely accessible hyperrealistic models. • It then recommended technical standards that can be adopted by AI companies and social media platforms.

Article Summaries:

  • Microsoft has released a blueprint for verifying online content, proposing technical standards that could help social‑media and AI firms distinguish authentic material from deepfakes and other AI‑generated media. The company’s safety research team evaluated 60 combinations of provenance records, invisible watermarks, and digital fingerprints, mapping which methods would reliably prove authenticity under various failure scenarios. The initiative is partly driven by upcoming legislation such as California’s AI Transparency Act. While Microsoft’s chief scientific officer said the findings would inform product roadmaps, the firm has not committed to applying its own recommendations across its platforms.

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