American voters are getting fake Joe Biden robocalls: Who is behind it?

The New Hampshire primaries are today and the dirty tricks are already underway. As Donald Trump and Nikki Haley face off for the Republicans, Democratic voters in the Granite State over the weekend received robocalls featuring the digitally manipulated voice of President Joe Biden. The robocall urged voters to ‘stay home’ and save their vote for November. But what happened? Why is this happening? And who is behind it? Let’s take a closer look: What happened? The news that the robocall was targeting Democratic voters was broken by NBC. A recording of the call generates a voice similar to Biden’s and employs his often-used phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey.”

It then tells the listener to “save your vote for the November election.”

“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the voice mimicking Biden says. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

NBC reports that NH voters are getting robocalls with a deepfake of Biden’s voice telling them to not vote tomorrow.

“it’s important that you save your vote for the November election.”https://t.co/LAOKRtDanK pic.twitter.com/wzm0PcaN6H

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 22, 2024

The New Hampshire attorney-general’s office said it was investigating after a high-profile Democrat in the state filed a complaint. The Democrat, Kathy Sullivan, is the former chair of the Democratic Party in the state. Her number appears at the end of the message telling Biden voters not to bother voting today. “Although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications," the attorney general’s office was quoted as saying in a statement by NBC. “These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters. New Hampshire voters should disregard the content of this message entirely.” Why is this happening? Because Biden isn’t on the ballot in New Hampshire – though his allies haven’t given up on the state.

As per NPR, this is down to a tiff between the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee.

More from Explainers

This Week in Explainers: How recovering from Gen-Z protests is a Himalayan task for Nepal How Tanzania’s ‘hero rats’ are saving lives by sniffing out landmines, tuberculosis

The DNC this year has designated South Carolina – a state that saved Biden’s candidacy in 2016 and catapulted him to the presidency – as the year’s first contest. Sullivan, who leads a super PAC in the state, is urging New Hampshire Democrats to conduct a write-in campaign for the president. Sullivan said she alerted law enforcement and issued a complaint to the attorney general after multiple voters in the state reported receiving the call Sunday night. “This call links back to my personal cell phone number without my permission,” she said in a statement. “It is outright election interference, and clearly an attempt to harass me and other New Hampshire voters who are planning to write-in Joe Biden on Tuesday.” [caption id=“attachment_13645102” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The Trump campaign said it had nothing to do with the recording but declined further comment. AP[/caption] “This is deep fake disinformation designed to harm Joe Biden, suppress votes, and damage our democracy,”  Aaron Jacobs, a spokesperson for the write-in campaign told Axios. We are confident that New Hampshire voters will respond by showing up to the polls and making clear that we won’t be intimidated by these dirty tricks," Jacobs added. Gail Huntley, a 73-year-old Democrat in Hancock, New Hampshire, who plans to write in Biden’s name on Tuesday, said she received the call at about 6:25 pm on Sunday. She instantly recognised the voice as belonging to Biden but quickly realised it was a scam because what he was saying didn’t make sense. Initially, she figured his words were taken out of context. “I didn’t think about it at the time that it wasn’t his real voice. That’s how convincing it was,” she said, adding that she is appalled but not surprised that AI-generated fakes like this are spreading in her state. Who is behind it? We don’t know – yet. “My head exploded and I said, ‘I can’t believe that some son of a gun is trying to suppress the vote on Tuesday,’” Sullivan told NPR. But Sullivan told NBC the conclusions can be drawn quite easily.

“It’s obviously somebody who wants to hurt Joe Biden.”

“Hopefully, who’s been doing this won’t be able to do this in the future,” Sullivan told ABC. “You shouldn’t be telling people you shouldn’t go and vote. That’s crazy. That undermines our democracy. It’s just not right. I’ve been calling it an unpardonable sin.” “I want them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible because this is an attack on democracy,” Sullivan further told NBC. “I’m not going to let it go. I want to know who’s paying for it? Who knew about it? Who benefits?” It was unclear how many people received the call but a spokesperson for Sullivan said she heard from at least a dozen people who received it. CNN reported estimates from the anti-robocall app maker Nomorobo as saying that the number of such calls could be anywhere between 5,000 and 25,000. The attorney general’s office encouraged anyone who has received the call to email the state Justice Department’s election law unit. The office told ABC “approximately a dozen” people have called to request not to get such calls in the future and  “approximately half a dozen” more sent in complaints to them or the secretary of state’s office. What do experts say? David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told NPR the calls were a “canary in the coalmine for what we’re going to see” this election year. Becker, who formerly worked for the justice department, added, “It could very well be that this wasn’t designed to help the campaign so much or to hurt President Biden, but to be one of the first shots in 2024 by some actors, whether they be foreign or domestic, to just get us to generally distrust our overall election system.”

“Those who are pushing disinformation, whether they use AI or not, have an easier job than those who are pushing accurate information.”

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

Ghaziabad woman dead, pilgrims attacked in bus… How Nepal’s Gen-Z protests turned into a living hell for Indian tourists

Were bodyguards involved in Charlie Kirk’s shooting? The many conspiracies surrounding the killing

“The political deepfake moment is here,” Robert Weissman, the president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, told The New York Times. “Policymakers must rush to put in place protections or we’re facing electoral chaos.” New Hampshire State Representative Angela Brennan told CBS she was worried about the impact of such deepfakes “You know, it’s not like maybe it used to be where it costs thousands of dollars to create a deep fake. We’re talking about something that someone can do on their phone in five minutes time. It’s a really big problem and it’s something we all need to be paying attention to,” said Brennan. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Monday that the call “was indeed fake and not recorded by the president.” Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement that the campaign is “actively discussing additional actions to take immediately.” [caption id=“attachment_13578652” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Nikki Haley is trailling Donald Trump in New Hampshire. AP[/caption] “Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign,” she said. Katie Dolan, a spokeswoman for the campaign of Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who is challenging Biden in the Democratic primary, said Phillips’ team was not involved and only found out about the deepfake attempt when a reporter called seeking comment. “Any effort to discourage voters is disgraceful and an unacceptable affront to democracy,” Dolan said in a statement. “The potential use of AI to manipulate voters is deeply disturbing.” The Trump campaign said it had nothing to do with the recording but declined further comment. AI and disinformation The apparent attempt at voter suppression using rapidly advancing generative AI technology is one example of what experts warn will make 2024 a year of unprecedented election disinformation around the world. Generative AI deepfakes already have appeared in campaign ads in the 2024 presidential race, and the technology has been misused to spread misinformation in multiple elections across the globe over the past year, from Slovakia to Indonesia and Taiwan. “We have been concerned that generative AI would be weaponised in the upcoming election and we are seeing what is surely a sign of things to come,” said Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviewed the call recording and confirmed it is a relatively low-quality AI fake. As AI technology improves, the federal government is still scrambling to address it. Congress has yet to pass legislation seeking to regulate the industry’s role in politics despite some bipartisan support. The Federal Election Commission is weighing public comments on a petition for it to regulate AI deepfakes in campaign ads. Though the use of generative AI to influence elections is relatively new, “robocalls and dirty tricks go back a long ways,” said Becker. He said it’s hard to determine whether the main intent of the New Hampshire calls was to suppress voting or simply to “continue the process of getting Americans to untether themselves from fact and truth regarding our democracy.” “They don’t need to convince us that what they’re saying, the lies they’re telling, are true,” he said. “They just need to convince us that there is no truth, that you can’t believe anything you’re told.” With inputs from agencies