NBC News: Fake Biden Robocall Tells New Hampshire Dems Not to Vote Tomorrow

NOBLES: “Kevin, let’s turn to you now and talk about this robocall with the fake Biden audio that certainly sounds authentic. What do we know about it and how much concern is there about future fake robocalls?”

COLLIER: “You know, I’ve spoken all day today with AI and disinformation experts, and they’re pretty resounding there’s not an exact way to say with absolute certainty that this was a voice cloning AI program, but they’re pretty confident that it was. These things are so cheap, they’re so easy to find, even for free online. It’s just kind of a given, I think, in all their minds that this is going to be something we’re going to see more and more and more of throughout the election from now until November. The FEC, I was checking with them today, they have no role — they haven’t even decided yet if they’re going to create a rulemaking process prohibiting deepfakes in political campaigning.”

NOBLES: “And I would imagine that, even if they are — you talk about whether or not there should be a penalty for this, but wouldn’t it be very difficult to even track down who’s responsible for putting the call out?”

COLLIER: “Yeah, it’s an absolute morass. There is a movement, of course, to get the major AI companies to watermark their products, to say like, hey, this is a way that we can tell that this was artificially generated, but not everybody follows that. It doesn’t exist right now, and there’s plenty of third party, homemade AI services. The cat’s already out of the bag.”

NOBLES: “So, Mike, how is the Biden campaign reacting to all of this?”

MEMOLI: “Well, Ryan, it was interesting. Obviously, we broke this story. So when I approached the Biden campaign at first, there was some hesitation about whether to respond. The reason being, they’ve been so reluctant to talk about anything that has to do with the New Hampshire primary because they’re looking ahead. But we did ultimately, after our story posted, hear from the campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and in a statement she said that ‘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 of this campaign.’ Now, compare that statement to what we heard from Dean Phillips’s campaign spokesperson saying that any effort to discourage voters will be unacceptable. And that is part of actually what has been Dean Philips’s message here, because he’s arguing what the DNC has tried to do by undermining New Hampshire’s primary here has itself been a form of voter suppression. Of course, really unclear if this is going to affect the turnout. The Secretary of State was already predicting only about 88,000 Democratic votes here cast, compare that to over 322,000 on the Republican side, a big disparity, even more so than you usually would see in an incumbent year for the party in power.”

NOBLES: “Yeah, I imagine that’s part of why that robocall was effective because it was a message that Democrats were talking about just a couple of months ago, don’t participate in the New Hampshire primary, now with this write-in campaign that’s changed a little bit. So, Kevin, back to you. I mean, how much do we expect to see this kind of thing this year, and is there really anything that states or federal governments can do right now to prevent this from happening again between now and November?”

COLLIER: “In word, no. There’s not — there’s no meaningful regulation on the horizon that would regulate the entire industry, specific companies maybe somewhat. There’s not really much any state can do. Like I said, the FEC has not even begun to decide whether or not they would have a rule-making process for this. So, no, this is wide, wide open.”

NOBLES: “Almost like a shrug emoji. That’s all we can do when it comes to this, and this is going to be a massive issue heading into the November election. Thank you guys both for that reporting. We appreciate it.”