AI Biden tells people not to vote on election day
Robocalls likely generated by artificial intelligence and impersonating President Joe Biden urging Americans not to vote in the presidential primary have threatened to engineer the 2024 election.
The fake recorded messages begin with a phrase that Biden likes to use: ‘What a bunch of malarkey’.
‘It’s important that you save your vote for the November election,’ states the robocall that went out over the weekend. ‘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.’
The attorney general’s office of New Hampshire – which is hosting the first primary election in the country on Tuesday – quickly stated that the robocall ‘appears to be artificially generated’ and should be disregarded entirely.
‘These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters,’ stated the office on Monday.
It is a real-life instance of artificial deceptive audio or video known as deepfake infiltrating the US election, which political and disinformation experts have been fearing.
‘The political deepfake moment is here,’ stated Robert Weissman, president of the progressive government watchdog group Public Citizen.
‘Policymakers must rush to put in place protections or we’re facing electoral chaos.
‘The New Hampshire deepfake is a reminder of the many ways that deepfakes can sow confusion and perpetuate fraud.’
Robocalls like the fake Biden one could influence voter behavior and curb turnout in contests like the New Hampshire primary, which has been whittled down to ex-President Donald Trump and former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
If Trump achieves more than 50% of the vote, he will have all but secured the GOP nomination. Haley hopes to pull off an upset or come within a few percentage points of Trump. Biden’s name is not on the ballot and is only a write-in candidate against two leading Democratic candidates.
The fake Biden robocall poses a danger in potentially making people believe erroneously that voting in the New Hampshire primary would only benefit Trump, and discouraging them from getting out to the polls.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told NBC News that they are ‘actively discussing additional actions to take immediately’ around the robocall.
A Trump campaign spokesperson denied involvement in the robocalls.
‘Not us,’ the spokesperson told the news outlet. ‘We have nothing to do with it.’
A handful of states last year enacted laws aimed at managing issues that arise from AI and deepfakes in campaigns, and lawmakers are drafting bills to regulate AI-produced political content.
A spokesperson for the campaign of Minnesota Rep Dean Phillips, who is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, said ‘the potential use of AI to manipulate voters is deeply disturbing’.
‘Any effort to discourage voters is disgraceful and an unacceptable affront to democracy,’ said the spokesperson, Katie Dolan.
The AI Biden robocall is under an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice’s Election Law Unit.
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