The political consultant Hospitalized The company was indicted on 26 counts by the Federal Communications Commission in New Hampshire and fined $6 million for sending fake automated calls impersonating President Biden ahead of the New Hampshire Democratic primary earlier this year.
New Hampshire’s Attorney General announced Thursday that Steve Cramer has been indicted in multiple states on 13 felony counts of voter suppression and bribery, as well as 13 counts of candidate impersonation, and that Cramer has also been fined $6 million by the FCC for making illegal robocalls.
In a recording of the call obtained by CBS News, a voice sounding like Biden tells Democratic New Hampshire voters to “save” their votes for November’s general election and to stay home.
“Voting this Tuesday only gives Republicans a chance to re-elect Donald Trump,” the voice says. “Your vote doesn’t mean this Tuesday, it means November.”
It is the first time that “deepfake” technology has been intertwined with a US election, and this week the US Intelligence agencies warn In a breaking report obtained by CBS News, he spoke about the threat of generative AI heading into November.
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Kramer is accused of orchestrating the robocalls. Interview with CBS New YorkCramer said he wanted to draw attention to the need for federal and state regulation of the use of artificial intelligence in politics, adding that he spent $500 to create the fake Biden voice. Cramer said about 5,000 people received the call.
“For me to do that and get $5 million worth of attention, I need to remain anonymous so that the restrictions will go away or at least start to go away on their own. I don’t need to be famous. That was not my intention. My intention was to make a difference,” Steve Cramer told CBS New York.
CBS News has reached out to Kramer for comment on the indictment.
Following the call, the Federal Communications Commission issued a unanimous ruling in early February outlawing AI-generated voices in robocalls. The FCC also separately fined Ringo Telecom, the provider from which Cramer’s call originated, $2 million for “clear violations of the FCC’s caller ID authentication rules.”
In an interview with NBC News, the New Orleans magician said he created the robocall, which the network further reported took less than 20 minutes to create and cost just $1.
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a statement that he hopes the indictment will “serve as a powerful deterrent to those who seek to interfere in our elections, including through the use of artificial intelligence.”
A spokesman for Rep. Dean Phillips, who spent much of his time campaigning in New Hampshire during Biden’s primary for the Democratic nomination, said in January that his campaign had no involvement in robocalls. After NBC detailed Cramer’s work for Phillips’ campaign helping with ballot access, the spokesman said Cramer made the calls “of his own volition” and that “we firmly condemn his actions.”
“This case is the canary in the coal mine,” Phillips told CBS News in a statement Thursday evening. “Congress must take immediate action to reign in the malign uses of artificial intelligence before it controls us.”
