Reports from Associated Press (AP) and NBC News have revealed that Louisiana magician Paul Carpenter and political consultant Steve Kramer – linked to Dean Phillips’ presidential campaign – were behind a series of AI-imitated President Joe Biden robocalls in New Hampshire.
Carpenter had been hired by Kramer, a consultant for the Phillips campaign at the time, under the impression that the latter was working for the Biden campaign. Kramer’s alleged motive was saving both time and money on the campaign. Carpenter provided evidence pointing at Kramer’s involvement, including the text with the script for the phone call, a Venmo payment, and a later text instructing him to “act like nothing happened”.
Dean Phillips responded with disgust to the revelations on X (formerly known as Twitter) writing about his disappointment in the consultant’s actions.
Notably, Carpenter defended his part by releasing an example of an AI video of Biden to show how easily such AI manipulation can be produced and even used in strange situations like this.
As per the information released by the New Hampshire Department of Justice (NHDOJ), the calls were traced back to Texas corporations, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom, the latter of which provided phone services to the former. The FCC has issued a cease and desist order to stop supporting illegal robocall traffic on its networks to the involved parties.
In response to the New Hampshire AI robocalls, the FCC issued new guidelines prohibiting the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls. Furthermore, tech giants including Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and TikTok announced a commitment to safeguard democratic elections from artificial intelligence’s disruptive potential.