Deepfakes on are on the campaign trail too

The Dean Phillips chatbot isn’t the only artificial intelligence in the race.

Ahead of presidential primaries Tuesday night in the Granite State, the New Hampshire Justice Department said it is investigating reports of robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden. The calls, allegedly featuring an AI version of Biden’s voice, encourage voters to stay home on Tuesday and instead save their vote for November.

“Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the faux Biden said. It’s the first-known case of someone using generative AI to suppress the vote in a presidential election. The robocall was also “spoofed” to seem like it was sent by a New Hampshire Democratic operative, the government said in a press release. The state justice department reminded voters that voting on Tuesday doesn’t preclude them from voting in November’s general election.

Biden’s likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, has meanwhile resorted to telling his supporters that an advertisement showing his gaffes is artificially generated — even though they’re not. “The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using AI (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, not an easy thing to do,” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social, a claim the Lincoln Project, the ad’s maker, vehemently denied.

In an interview with The Washington Post, the UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid said AI presents a “liar’s dividend,” which gives candidates plausible deniability to say anything they don’t like — or wish they didn’t do or say — is actually AI.