On Friday, prominent technology firms collectively pledged to voluntarily embrace “reasonable precautions” in order to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence tools for the disruption of democratic elections globally.

Leaders from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and TikTok assembled at the Munich Security Conference to introduce a new framework outlining their approach to addressing AI-generated deepfakes designed to deceive voters.

Additionally, twelve other companies, including Elon Musk’s X, are joining in support of this agreement.

The accord is largely symbolic, but targets increasingly realistic AI-generated images, audio and video “that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provide false information to voters about when, where, and how they can lawfully vote,” the Associated Press reported.

The companies are not pledging to outright ban or remove deepfakes. Instead, the agreement delineates the approaches they will adopt to identify and label deceptive AI content when it is generated or disseminated on their platforms.

The accord emphasizes that these companies will exchange best practices among themselves and implement “swift and proportionate responses” when such content begins to proliferate.

Written by B.C. Begley