How AI Is Being Used to Influence and Disrupt the 2024 Election

Two days before the New Hampshire primary in January, a robocall featuring an AI-generated imitation of President Biden’s voice was sent out to thousands of people in the state urging them not to vote. The call was also spoofed to appear as if it had come from the telephone of a former state Democratic Party official. Independent analysis later confirmed that the fake Biden voice had been created with ElevenLabs’ AI text-to-speech voice generator.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the robocall and subsequently determined it had been sent to as many as 25,000 phone numbers by a Texas-based company called Life Corporation, which sells robocalling and other services to political organizations.

On February 23, NBC News reported that a New Orleans magician named Paul Carpenter had admitted using ElevenLabs to create the fake Biden audio. Carpenter said he did it after being paid by Steve Kramer, a longtime political operative then working for Democratic presidential candidate (and AI proponent) Dean Phillips. The campaign has denied having any knowledge of the effort.

“I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it,” Carpenter said. “There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.” He told NBC he was admitting his role in part to call attention to how easy it was to create the audio:

Carpenter — who holds world records in fork-bending and straitjacket escapes, but has no fixed address — showed NBC News how he created the fake Biden audio and said he came forward because he regrets his involvement in the ordeal and wants to warn people about how easy it is to use AI to mislead. Creating the fake audio took less than 20 minutes and cost only $1, he said, for which he was paid $150, according to Venmo payments from Kramer and his father, Bruce Kramer, that he shared.

“It’s so scary that it’s this easy to do,” Carpenter said. “People aren’t ready for it.”

Kramer, who also previously worked on the failed 2020 presidential campaign of Kanye West, was paid nearly $260,000 by the Phillips campaign across December and January for ballot-access work in Pennsylvania and New York. A Phillips campaign spokesperson told NBC News that it played no part in the AI robocall:

“If it is true that Mr. Kramer had any involvement in the creation of deepfake robocalls, he did so of his own volition which had nothing to do with our campaign,” Phillips’ press secretary Katie Dolan said. “The fundamental notion of our campaign is the importance of competition, choice, and democracy. We are disgusted to learn that Mr. Kramer is allegedly behind this call, and if the allegations are true, we absolutely denounce his actions.”

In a statement to NBC News, Kramer eventually admitted he was behind the robocall, which he said he sent to 5,000 likely Democratic voters. He claimed he did it to prevent future AI deepfaked robocalls:

“With a mere $500 investment, anyone could replicate my intentional call,” Kramer said. “Immediate action is needed across all regulatory bodies and platforms.”