Google to offer ‘high-quality information’ to voters for Lok Sabha polls. Details

Announcing the measures on Tuesday, Google said that ‘supporting elections is a critical part of our responsibility to our users and the democratic process.'

Published on: Mar 12, 2024, 16:40:20 IST

By HT News Desk, New Delhi

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Ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Google on Tuesday announced a series of measures to 'support the election process,’ saying that ‘supporting elections is a critical part of Google’s responsibility to our users and the democratic process.'

The general elections will be held in April-May (Image courtesy: Google)

This shall be done by giving ‘high-quality information’ to voters, safeguarding the platform from abuse, and helping people navigate the artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, the tech giant said in a blog post.

'Connecting voters to helpful information'

Under this, Google, in collaboration with the Election Commission of India (ECI), will enable people to discover key voting information on Google Search and YouTube, and in both English and Hindi. It will also provide ‘authoritative’ information on YouTube.

‘Safeguarding platform and combating misinformation’

For this, the Sundar Pichai-headed tech firm will work on three fronts, it said. These are: enforcement of its policies and using AI models to fight abuse at large scale; be transparent on election ads; and work with the ‘wider ecosystem’ to counter misinformation.

Additionally, it will support news publishers and fact-checkers for timely detection of misinformation, and to create a common repository that news publishers can use to tackle misinformation at scale.

‘Helping people navigate AI-generated content’

Here, Google will necessitate disclosure of election ads containing ‘synthetic content'; provide content labels on YouTube; restrict type of election-related queries for which its AI bot Gemini will return responses, provide users with additional context; enable digital watermarking; and, participate in a cross-industry effort for more transparency and context for people on AI-generated content.

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HT News Desk
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