On the eve of the 2024 New Hampshire primary, robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden counseled voters against partaking in a write-in campaign supporting Biden, urging them to “save your vote” for the general election. It was the first known instance of the deployment of voice-cloning artificial intelligence at significant scale to try to deter voters from participating in an American election. A political operative later admitted to commissioning the scheme; creating the fake audio reportedly cost just $1 and took less than 20 minutes. Similar attempts are almost certain to plague future elections as the rapid uptake and development of generative AI tools continue apace.
This phenomenon is not entirely new — vote suppression through disinformation has a long provenance in the United States. Since Black Americans and other Americans of color gained the formal right to vote, malefactors committed acts of terror to intimidate voters and pressed for restrictive election laws […]
There are a number of interesting points in this article which merit attention. I think that is foundational to distinguish voter suppression efforts conducted by officials as part of their duties vs. those efforts conducted by private actors. The former group merit discipline from the Federal or State authorities for behaving in a fashion rooted in prejudice against a specific taxpaying group. The latter deserve prosecution for fraud. Fraud is at the root of these AI deceptions. This is especially true for those groups wanting to use the public airwaves as a conduit for their work. If we are to improve our health as a culture we must root out fraud, and indicate clearly that it will not be tolerated. This would be a profound cultural shift. It will be harder to track those malefic actors using landlines, but should they be caught prosecution should be pursued.