New Hampshire residents were reportedly contacted via automated phone calls over the weekend by someone posing as Joe Biden, advising them not to cast their ballots in the upcoming primary election on Tuesday.
“Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the false tapes proclaimed, and the office claimed they were staged to appear as if issued by a Democratic committee officer.
Voting in the primary does not preclude people from casting ballots in the general election in November, according to the attorney general’s office.
“These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire presidential primary election and to suppress New Hampshire voters,” the office said in a statement. “New Hampshire voters should disregard the content of this message entirely.”
Previous coverage of the robocalls came from NBC News. Experts in the fields of disinformation and politics are worried that deepfakes, which use misleading audio, will spread widely during this election season.
The RNC utilised the technology last year to create a film depicting end-of-the-world scenarios in response to Joe Biden’s announcement of his re-election campaign. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shared phoney photos of his election opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, with former health official Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Since AI-generated political information has already been utilised to deceive voters in close foreign elections, state politicians are rushing to craft legislation to control this phenomenon.
“The political deepfake moment is here,” declared Robert Weissman, president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen. “If lawmakers don’t act quickly to institute safeguards, we risk electoral anarchy.”
After former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Kathleen Sullivan filed a complaint, the state’s attorney general’s office started looking into the robocall allegations.
According to Ms. Sullivan’s complaint, the robocalls were sent by her husband and her personal mobile number was provided to the receivers so they may ask to be removed from the call list.
According to Ms. Sullivan’s complaint, “these kinds of tactics, if left unpunished, will only get worse in the future.” She is the treasurer of a political committee that is encouraging voters to write in Mr. Biden’s name on Tuesday’s ballot.
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