New Hampshire voters received robocall messages over the weekend in a voice that was likely artificially generated to impersonate President Biden, urging them not to vote in Tuesday's primary election, according to the U.S. attorney general's office. state.
The fake recordings, which told listeners that “your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” were manipulated to appear as if they had been sent by a Democratic committee official, the office said.
The attorney general's office emphasized that voting in the primary would not rule out voters also casting their ballots in the November general election.
“These messages appear to be an illegal attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire presidential primary election and suppress New Hampshire voters,” the office said in a statement. “New Hampshire voters should completely ignore the content of this message.”
Political and misinformation experts have expressed concern that such misleading audio, known as deepfakes, could become prevalent this election season. Last year, the Republican National Committee used the technology to generate a video with images of apocalyptic scenarios after Biden announced his re-election bid. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump, his political rival, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official.
State lawmakers are scrambling to draft bills to regulate political content produced by artificial intelligence, which has already been used in close foreign elections to mislead voters.
“The political moment for deepfake is here,” Robert Weissman, president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Policymakers must rush to implement protections or we will face electoral chaos.”
In New Hampshire, the attorney general's office began investigating allegations of robocalls following a complaint from Kathleen Sullivan, former chairwoman of the state Democratic Party. In her complaint, Ms. Sullivan said that recipients of the unauthorized robocalls saw her husband's name on their caller ID and were given her personal cell phone number to call and request deletion. the call list.
Sullivan, treasurer of a political committee that pressures voters to put Biden's name on Tuesday's ballot, wrote in her complaint that “these types of tactics, if left unpunished, will only get worse in the future.”
