The New Hampshire’s Attorney General's office announced on Monday that it is actively investigating reports of a disturbing robocall. The call uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic President Joe Biden's voice.

The voice seems to be discouraging Biden voters from participating in the primary. 

The use of generative AI to influence elections is just the latest election deception. David Becker, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who now leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research says that “robocalls and dirty tricks go back a long way." 

He emphasized that misinformation campaigns are getting more sophisticated. 

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Biden’s Voice Confuses Voter’s

Attorney General John Formella also expressed his concern, labeling the robocall as an illegal attempt to disrupt and suppress voting. 

The recorded message, sent to multiple voters on Sunday, features a voice eerily similar to President Biden's, uttering his trademark phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey.” 

The deceptive call goes on to mislead voters, suggesting that voting in the Tuesday primary would somehow impact their ability to vote in the November general election.

Formella urged voters to disregard the message entirely. And said that voting in the primary does not preclude voters from participating in the general election.

Although President Biden is not actively campaigning in New Hampshire for the primary, his allies are running a write-in campaign for him.

False Identities 

The calls falsely appeared to recipients as coming from the personal cellphone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair involved in Granite for America, a super PAC supporting the Biden write-in campaign. 

Sullivan, who discovered the unauthorized use of her personal information, promptly alerted law enforcement. And she followed it up with a complaint to attorney general’s office.

It is unknown who the call went out to and how many recipients there were. Sullivan's spokesperson indicated that at least a dozen people reported receiving the misleading call. 

The attorney general’s office has encouraged those who received the call to report it to the state Justice Department’s election law unit.

White House Sounds Off

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that the call "was indeed fake and not recorded by the president." Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, issued a statement condemning the act of spreading disinformation to suppress voting. 

The Rise of Generative AI

Experts have been warning about the trend to weaponization generative AI in election campaigns. 

As technology advances, AI deepfakes have already surfaced in campaign ads during the 2024 presidential race.

The misuse of such technology to spread misinformation has been observed globally, from Slovakia to Indonesia and Taiwan.

Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, confirmed the relatively low-quality AI fake in the call recording.

 The Federal Election Commission is currently considering public comments on a petition seeking regulation of AI deepfakes in campaign ads.