"The Biden Deepfake Robocall Is Only the Beginning" 23 January 2024

A deepfake robocall impersonating President Biden is rocking the New Hampshire primary, and no one knows who’s behind it.

Over the weekend, voters in New Hampshire and New England received a call from a voice that sounded eerily like Biden, touting election “malarkey” and discouraging them to vote in the Tuesday primaries.

“We know the value of voting Democratic,” the robocall says. “It’s important that you save your vote for the November election. We’ll need your help electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.” Biden is not listed on the ballot because the Democratic party changed its first official primary this year from New Hampshire to South Carolina. There is, however, a state-level campaign encouraging voters to write in his name...

...In the year since ChatGPT launched, generative AI has quickly become a focus of concern for lawmakers worried about its potential to displace jobs and spread disinformation. Now, the deepfake robocall imitating Biden has further sparked these fears and highlighted the regulatory gaps around AI accountability and transparency...

...In July 2023, several tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google, made voluntary commitments to watermark video and photos that had been manipulated by AI that would essentially allow regular consumers to differentiate it from organic content. In October, the Biden administration issued an executive order with further guidance for companies developing AI technologies. Over the past few months, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has led a series of AI Insight Forums, inviting tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to meet with lawmakers and discuss regulation...

...Audio fakes are especially pernicious because, unlike faked photos or videos, they lack many of the visual signals that might help someone identify that they’ve been altered, says Hany Farid, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. “With robocalls, the audio quality on a phone is not great, and so it is easier to trick people with fake audio.”

Farid also worries that phone calls, unlike fake posts on social media, would be more likely to reach an older demographic that’s already susceptible to scams...

...It’s still unclear who is behind the calls. Civox, a company that creates AI voicebots for political campaigns, told WIRED that it had nothing to do with the call. The company helped create a bot for Pennsylvania Democrat Shamaine Daniels’ campaign to contact voters and answer questions over the phone. Civox’s CEO, Ilya Mouzykantskii, said that the company bars its clients from using unauthorized voices or creating deceitful calls like the one circulating in New Hampshire.

“Campaigning using artificial intelligence is going to be the defining story of the 2024 election cycle,” Mouzykantskii told WIRED on Monday. “Things are going to get a lot weirder as we get closer to November. This is the first story, and there will be many, many more.”..