New deep fakes are all over the internet -- and you won't believe the new ones Raymond Arroyo has located. The trial has begun of a Democratic political consultant who has admitted to sending artificial intelligence (AI) generated robocalls mimicking President Biden ahead of the 2024 New Hampshire primary. Steve Kramer faces a 6 million fine and more than two dozen criminal charges after he hired a magician to create a deepfake of President Biden urging New Hampshire voters not to participate in the primary. The fines, proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), are the first involving AI technology. Former president Joe Biden speaks on the phone during a National Small Business Week event in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 1, 2023, left.

Days after New Hampshire voters received a robocall with an artificially generated voice that resembled President Joe Biden's, the Federal Communications Commission banned the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls. The 2024 United States election would be the first to unfold amid wide public access to AI generators, which let people create images, audio and video – some for nefarious purposes. Institutions rushed to limit AI-enabled misdeeds. Sixteen states enacted legislation around AI's use in elections and campaigns; many of these states required disclaimers in synthetic media published close to an election. The Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency supporting election administrators, published an "AI toolkit" with tips election officials could use to communicate about elections in an age of fabricated information.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has officially issued its full recommended fine against political consultant Steve Kramer. This is after he initiated a series of robocalls to New Hampshire residents with pre-recorded audio of President Biden's voice, using deepfake AI technology. The fake Biden told voters not to vote in the upcoming primary, saying "Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday." Kramer must pay 6 million in fines in the next 30 days or the Department of Justice will handle collection, according to a FCC statement. Kramer doesn't just face a fine; he also has criminal charges against him.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has officially issued its full recommended fine against political consultant Steve Kramer for a series of illegal robocalls using deepfake AI technology and caller ID spoofing during the New Hampshire primaries. Kramer must pay 6 million in fines in the next 30 days or the Department of Justice will handle collection, according to a FCC statement. Kramer violated the Truth in Caller ID Act passed in 2009 that prohibits anyone from "knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to defraud, cause harm or wrongfully obtain anything of value," according to legislative records. The law preceded the widespread usage of AI, but the FCC voted unanimously to have it apply to such deepfakes this past February. The phony robocalls delivered pre-recorded audio of President Biden's voice using deepfake AI technology to New Hampshire residents leading up to the 2024 presidential primary election.

For years now, AI has undermined the public's ability to trust what it sees, hears, and reads. The Republican National Committee released a provocative ad offering an "AI-generated look into the country's possible future if Joe Biden is re-elected," showing apocalyptic, machine-made images of ruined cityscapes and chaos at the border. Fake robocalls purporting to be from Biden urged New Hampshire residents not to vote in the 2024 primary election. This summer, the Department of Justice cracked down on a Russian bot farm that was using AI to impersonate Americans on social media, and OpenAI disrupted an Iranian group using ChatGPT to generate fake social-media comments. It's not altogether clear what damage AI itself may cause, though the reasons for concern are obvious--the technology makes it easier for bad actors to construct highly persuasive and misleading content.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has drafted a series of letters to nine major telecom companies, including AT&T and Comcast, to ask if they're actually doing anything about AI political robocalls. AI-generated voices are getting pretty good at mimicking humans and we've already seen this technology in action, when an audio deepfake urged voters to skip the New Hampshire Democratic primary. "We know that AI technologies will make it cheap and easy to flood our networks with deepfakes used to mislead and betray trust. It is especially chilling to see AI voice cloning used to impersonate candidates during elections. As AI tools become more accessible to bad actors and scammers, we need to do everything we can to keep this junk off our networks," wrote Rosenworcel. It's worth noting that all AI robocalls were banned back in February, political or not, but the big telecom companies have yet to announce any enforcement plans.

On January 21, Patricia Gingrich was about to sit down for dinner when her landline phone rang. The New Hampshire voter picked up and heard a voice telling her not to vote in the upcoming presidential primary. "As I listened to it, I thought, gosh, that sounds like Joe Biden," Gingrich told Al Jazeera. "But the fact that he was saying to save your vote, don't use it in this next election -- I knew Joe Biden would never say that." The voice may have sounded like the United States president, but it wasn't him: It was a deepfake, generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Sometimes there are no background noises when there should be. Or, in the case of the robocall, there's a lot of noise mixed into the background almost to give an air of realness that actually sounds unnatural. With photos, it helps to zoom in and examine closely for any "inconsistencies with the physical world or human pathology", like buildings with crooked lines or hands with six fingers, Lyu said. Little details like hair, mouths and shadows can hold clues to whether something is real. Hands were once a clearer tell for AI-generated images because they would more frequently end up with extra appendages, though the technology has improved and that's becoming less common, Lyu said.

I'd been waiting, compulsively checking my inbox. I opened the email and scrolled until I saw a button that said, plainly, "Use voice." I considered saying something aloud to mark the occasion, but that felt wrong. The computer would now speak for me. I had thought it'd be fun, and uncanny, to clone my voice. I'd sought out the AI start-up ElevenLabs, paid 22 for a "creator" account, and uploaded some recordings of myself. A few hours later, I typed some words into a text box, hit "Enter," and there I was: all the nasal lilts, hesitations, pauses, and mid-Atlantic-by-way-of-Ohio vowels that make my voice mine.

The AI election is here. Already this year, a robocall generated using artificial intelligence targeted New Hampshire voters in the January primary, purporting to be President Joe Biden and telling them to stay home in what officials said could be the first attempt at using AI to interfere with a US election. The "deepfake" calls were linked to two Texas companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom. It's not clear if the deepfake calls actually prevented voters from turning out, but that doesn't really matter, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice-president of Public Citizen, a group that's been pushing for federal and state regulation of AI's use in politics. "I don't think we need to wait to see how many people got deceived to understand that that was the point," Gilbert said.