Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics but wasn’t involved in the Microsoft research, says that if the industry adopted the company’s blueprint, it would be meaningfully more difficult to deceive the public with manipulated content. Sophisticated individuals or governments can work to bypass such tools, he says, but the new standard could eliminate a significant portion of misleading material.

“I don’t think it solves the problem, but I think it takes a nice big chunk out of it,” he says.

Still, there are reasons to see Microsoft’s approach as an example of somewhat naïve techno-optimism. There is growing evidence that people are swayed by AI-generated content even when they know that it is false. And in a recent study of pro-Russian AI-generated videos about the war in Ukraine, comments pointing out that the videos were made with AI received far less engagement than comments treating them as genuine. 

“Are there people who, no matter what you tell them, are going to believe what they believe?” Farid asks. “Yes.” But, he adds, “there are a vast majority of Americans and citizens around the world who I do think want to know the truth.”

That desire has not exactly led to urgent action from tech companies. Google started adding a watermark to content generated by its AI tools in 2023, which Farid says has been helpful in his investigations. Some platforms use C2PA, a provenance standard Microsoft helped launch in 2021. But the full suite of changes that Microsoft suggests, powerful as they are, might remain only suggestions if they threaten the business models of AI companies or social media platforms.