How we’re supporting the upcoming Australian federal election

Supporting elections is a critical part of Google’s responsibility to people using our services and the democratic process. As Australian voters head to the polls on May 3, Google is working with government agencies and the wider community to connect voters to helpful and authoritative information, and keep our platforms safe from misuse.

Connecting voters to reliable and helpful information

We know that in the lead up to elections, people need useful and relevant information to help them navigate the electoral process. We make reliable information easily available with helpful product features, including:

• Search: Google Search surfaces high quality, authoritative information. When people search for topics like “how to vote,” they will find information about ID requirements, voting stations and more - linking to authoritative sources including from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
• YouTube: To connect people to high-quality election news and information, our recommendation system prominently surfaces content and relevant context from authoritative sources, including local and national news sources on the homepage, in search results, and the “Up Next” panel. During an election, we also surface various election information panels against relevant search results and videos, to connect users to context from authoritative sources including the Australian Electoral Commission resources about how, where and when to vote. We’ll also be working with broadcasters to bring their coverage of election night to more audiences on YouTube.
• Election Ads: We’ve long required advertisers who wish to run election ads to go through an identity verification process and have in-ad disclosures. These ads also appear in our Political Advertising Transparency Report. It’s designed to help people understand who is paying for political ads, how much they are spending, who the ads are targeting, and what the ad content is. This information is displayed in a searchable ads library, which is updated daily with a 3-4 day lag to enable all relevant information to be processed. Our intention is to make it as useful and accessible as possible to the Australian community. More information about how the transparency report works and how to use the data is available in these FAQs.

Caption: Google’s Political Advertising Transparency Report is designed to help people understand who is paying for political ads, how much they are spending, who the ads are being targeted to, and what the ad content is.

Safeguarding our platforms from abuse

Protecting the integrity of elections also means keeping our products and services safe from abuse. Across Google and YouTube, we have long standing policies to help keep our platforms and the people using them safe, and which apply to everyone and for all types of content, including elections:

• YouTube: Our YouTube Community Guidelines include policies against hate speech, harassment, incitement to violence, technically manipulated content, and certain types of election misinformation. We rely on a combination of machine learning and human reviewers to identify and remove content that violates our policies.
• Ads: We have strict policies governing election-related ads on our platforms. Advertisers are required to be verified and we are also applying restricted targeting for election ads in Australia. Only geographic location (except radius targeting), age, gender, contextual targeting options such as ad placements, topics, keywords against sites, apps, pages and videos, are permitted. All other types of targeting are not allowed for use in election ads.
• People can report content they believe violates our policies, including on advertising and misinformation here. Legal complaints should be lodged at g.co/legal.

Helping people navigate AI-generated content

As more people interact with AI-generated content, we have introduced policies and tools to help people navigate this including:

• Ads disclosures: Google was the first tech company to launch disclosure requirements for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers use AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions. Our ads policies already prohibit the use of manipulated media to mislead people, such as deepfakes or doctored content.
• Content labels on YouTube: We want to help provide viewers with as much context as possible about the content they’re watching. We’ve already started displaying labels for content created with YouTube generative AI features, like Dream Screen. Creators are also required to disclose when they’ve created realistic altered or synthetic content, with videos also clearly labelled.
• Providing users with additional context: About this Image in Search helps people assess the credibility and context of images found online. Our double-check feature in Gemini evaluates whether there is content across the web to substantiate its response.
• Digital watermarking: We’re committed to finding ways to ensure every image generated through our products has embedded watermarking with Google DeepMind’s SynthID.
• Industry collaboration: We joined the C2PA coalition and standard, a cross-industry effort to help provide more transparency and context for people on AI-generated content. We’re bringing C2PA’s technical standards for metadata to Ads, Search and YouTube.

Protecting election information online

We’re working with campaigns, elections officials, journalists and global organisations to ensure the security of the online platforms that they use. The Advanced Protection Program, our strongest level of account security for those who need it, is available at no charge, as is Project Shield, a free service that uses Google technology to protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web.

At Google, our mission is to make the world’s information accessible and useful to everyone, and we’re always thinking about different ways we can continue to connect voters to authoritative and helpful information online.