Q and A with Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact Team
As the 2024 campaign cycle gears up, there has been a lot of chatter about artificial intelligence and other cybersecurity risks.
DDC partners with Microsoft on campaign security issues, including artificial intelligence. We recently talked with Microsoft's Ashley O’Rourke and Seth Reznik who are part of Microsoft’s newly formed Campaign Success Team dedicated to helping political campaigns navigate cybersecurity challenges and the new world of AI.
DDC: Microsoft has a long history and made significant commitments to defending democracy around the world. We have worked with you since we started operations in 2019. Can you talk about the mission of Microsoft in the campaigns and election space and your latest efforts related to campaign security and the impact you hope to achieve?
MSFT: [Ashley] In November 2023, Microsoft announced a set of Election Protection Commitments to help safeguard voters, candidates and campaigns, and election authorities. These commitments are focused on supporting political campaigns, promoting a healthy information ecosystem, safeguarding electoral processes, and driving responsible AI innovation. As we approach a historic moment of global elections, we are excited about the potential of AI to empower campaigns with time-saving innovation and are committed to help organizations build the skills needed to maximize the technology available to them—all while safeguarding the integrity of sensitive data. We are also working to help protect the political ecosystem from malicious actors who wage cyberattacks and misuse AI to influence and interfere with the democratic process. While no individual, institution, or company can guarantee that the ecosystem is secure, by working together we can make meaningful progress to safeguard elections and earn public trust, while harnessing responsible AI to help campaigns find new ways to engage and reach voters, increase productivity, and accelerate their impact.
DDC: AI is being talked about as a game changer across a variety of industries and everyday life. Microsoft is an acknowledged leader making AI tools available across many of its products and platforms. It is assumed campaigns will be big benefactors of AI. How can they responsibly use it in their operations?
MSFT: [Seth] I think that generative AI represents an important opportunity to campaigns for both innovation and increased productivity. We all know that campaign staff work extremely hard, and the most valuable resource on campaigns is that time.
Routine tasks can be automated using AI, allowing campaign staff to focus on strategic planning and creativity. Getting over hurdles like the tyranny of the blank page or using AI as an editor help with processes that we are all already doing, but in many cases getting stuck on.
As you said though, responsibility and ethical practices are crucial. Transparency is key - campaigns should have policies around AI use that maintain needed disclosures and most importantly prioritize human oversight. Always remember that ultimately you are responsible for the output, not the AI. With thoughtful and transparent use, campaigns can benefit from AI while maintaining public trust.
DDC: As we move into 2024, there is a lot of concern about the use of generative AI to attempt to influence the outcomes via mis and disinformation, what are your concerns?
MSFT: [Ashley] This is one of the areas that our team was created to focus on. AI offers a new world of creative and productivity opportunities, but there are also associated risks. Recently, Microsoft, in a group of 20+ companies, announced an accord that aims to address the abuse of AI-generated audio, video, and images that fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates and other key stakeholders in a democratic election. The accord outlines eight specific commitments that cover the areas of safety by design, content provenance and watermarking, detection and response, transparency, engagement, public awareness, and resilience. We view this as a first and important step, but one that needs to go in concert with work from governments, civil society, and the public to make happen. There’s much more to read here: Meeting the moment: combating AI deepfakes in elections through today’s new tech accord - Microsoft On the Issues
DDC: Proving authenticity of a campaign’s digital content is a core challenge to combating misinformation. Can you talk about Microsoft’s role both internally and how you work with industry in helping campaigns thwart misinformation and proactive steps they can take?
MSFT: [Seth] To combat the impact that deceptive AI generated content can have, Microsoft has worked with a cross-industry group (C2PA) including Adobe, Google, Sony, Trupic, the BBC, New York Times and others to develop a widely adopted standard for content provenance. Content provenance is the ability to trace the origin, history, and authenticity of digital media, such as images and videos. It seeks to clarify important questions about media, like: “Where and how did the content come from? Is it real or artificial? What are its creation and modification dates?”
This is done by embedding metadata into the media files that disclose those details. This metadata can then be verified and reviewed by users. Organizations in C2PA have already begun implementing content credentials in their products, from the ability to automatically add credentials to images or videos created in Adobe products to Trupic adding credentials to images automatically at the time of capture.
Microsoft has launched a Content Integrity tool built for campaigns that will allow them to credential their media via a website, an app that allows for media captured on a phone to be automatically credentialed, and a site that will allow the public to check media they find online for credential details. Why is this important for campaigns? Not only will this help campaign’s maintain greater control over their content and candidate’s likeness, but it sends a trust-signal to voters that they are engaging with content from a verified source.
DDC: We are all about people and campaigns getting the most security out of the platforms they use. If I am a candidate, campaign manager, staff or volunteer on a campaign that runs on Microsoft, what are simple actions I can take to improve my account security quickly?
MSFT: [Ashley] The quickest and most important step to take is signing up with us for AccountGuard, our free cybersecurity program that not only offers an additional layer of protection and monitoring to your Microsoft hosted email domain, but also allows you to add the personal Microsoft email accounts (Outlook, Hotmail) for additional monitoring as well. Since personal accounts of high-profile users are a known attack vector, this adds another layer of security for your campaign. As part of this initiative, campaigns have access to enhanced identity protection by taking advantage of free security keys based on our partnership with Yubico and DDC. You can learn more about AccountGuard here: https://accountguard.microsoft.com/
DDC: What Microsoft products and services can eligible campaigns access through DDC?
MSFT: [Seth] In addition to AccountGuard and the content credentials tool, we are going to be rolling out a series of additional tools and resources for campaigns throughout this election cycle. These include:
M365 for Campaigns: Affordable, simplified security for political campaigns and parties, using tailored security settings.
Election Security Advisors: Proactive and reactive security review services offered through our partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC).
AI + Cybersecurity workshops: A series of training sessions on cybersecurity, deepfakes and responsibly innovating with AI for elections.
DDC: What's one fun application of AI that you’ve seen Microsoft users taking advantage of in the political campaign space?
Seth: One fun use case I’ve found for AI is using Copilot in Teams. Effective communication, collaboration and time-management are essential to a winning campaign – particularly since the pandemic when campaigns began taking advantage of virtual meeting tools. To get the most out of these engagements, AI enables you to quickly catch up on what you might have missed by summarizing key highlights of the meeting and outlining next steps based on the call. You can even ask questions to the Copilot (i.e. what were the action items assigned to me as we prep for this campaign rally?)
Ashley: Using the AI Copilot in Excel! Almost every campaign or committee staffer has needed to rush through an analysis of historical election results or turnout statistics at some point in their career. Using Copilot to answer questions about the election results (i.e. Which count had the highest winning margin?), generate new calculated columns and creating charts/graphs that you can quickly drop into a campaign plan – all through basic prompts – makes this process so much faster.