Who Is Behind the Fake Biden Robocall in New Hampshire?

What was the fraudulent robocall, and what did it say?

In the robocall, a voice digitally altered to sound like Joe Biden says:

Republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and Democratic voters to participate in their primary. What a bunch of malarkey. We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count. It’s important that you save your vote for the November election. We’ll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.

The call was made to appear as if it came from Kathy Sullivan, a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair who helps run the super-PAC backing the Write-in Biden campaign in the state, which is encouraging New Hampshire Democrats to write in Joe Biden’s name on the ballot. (His name does not appear on the ballot as a consequence of the state defying the Democratic Party’s new rules and scheduling its primary ahead of South Carolina’s.)

Scammers regularly use spoofed numbers when sending out robocalls, and it’s not difficult to purchase or obtain lists of phone numbers to target.

The call said that anyone who wished to take their number off the call list should call Sullivan. She has lodged an official complaint about the fraudulent calls with the New Hampshire attorney general’s office and told NBC News that she began receiving responses to the call on Sunday:

Sullivan said she began receiving calls Sunday evening from those who had received the message. One woman she spoke to told her that Biden had called her, though she said she was not a Biden supporter. “I said, ‘You got a call from Joe Biden, and he gave you my number?’” Sullivan said she responded.

A volunteer for the write-in effort also received the call and recorded it, according to Sullivan, and shared it with organizers of the Biden write-in campaign … Sullivan said that while it isn’t clear who is behind the robocall, “It’s obviously somebody who wants to hurt Joe Biden.”

How many people received the call?

That’s not precisely clear. CNN has reported some estimates from anti-robocall app-maker Nomorobo:

The application rates the number of calls … as “severe,” among its highest rating for calls. Nomorobo CEO Aaron Foss told CNN their data showed that 76% of the robocalls targeted New Hampshire, with 12% directed at Boston and the remaining 12% covering other areas. They estimated the number of these fraudulent calls ranged from 5,000 to 25,000.

Who is behind the calls — and what has the response been so far?

It’s not clear who was responsible for the robocall — but there’s at least one clue so far.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the deepfake of Biden was created with the ElevenLabs AI voice generator, according to an analysis by the voice-fraud detection company Pindrop Security Inc. The ElevenLabs user account used to make the audio has been suspended, the report noted:

ElevenLabs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence software to replicate voices in more than two dozen languages, said in a statement that it couldn’t comment on specific incidents. But added, “We are dedicated to preventing the misuse of audio AI tools and take any incidents of misuse extremely seriously.” … In an interview last week, [CEO Mati] Staniszewski said that audio that impersonate voices without permission would be removed. On its website, the company says it allows voice clones of public figures, like politicians, if the clips “express humor or mockery in a way that it is clear to the listener that what they are hearing is a parody.”

The New Hampshire robocall appears to have violated those terms, unlike, for example, using a fake Biden voice for something like this:

On Monday, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced a probe into the calls, noting in a statement that “although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications.”

“These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters,” the office said, advising New Hampshire voters to “disregard the content of this message entirely” and reminding them that “voting in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election does not preclude a voter from additionally voting in the November General Election.”

Bloomberg reports that that ElevenLabs users must pay with a credit card to use the company’s voice clone tool, but it’s not clear if ElevenLabs has passed that credit card information onto New Hampshire authorities.

New Hampshire secretary of state David Scanlan also condemned the robocalls in an interview on Monday, explaining that they “reinforce a national concern about the effect of artificial intelligence on campaigns.”

Kathy Sullivan, the Write-in Biden campaign backer whose number was spoofed by the robocalls, told NBC News she also reported the calls to federal authorities. “I want them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible because this is an attack on democracy,” she said. “I’m not going to let it go. I want to know who’s paying for it? Who knew about it? Who benefits?”

The Biden campaign is also alarmed. Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement that they are “actively discussing additional actions to take immediately” and that “spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.”

The Trump campaign and the campaign for Democrat Dean Phillips, who is challenging Biden and is on the ballot in New Hampshire, have both denied any involvement in the calls.

As the New York Times points out, this kind of election interference is likely to become the new normal:

Disinformation and political experts have raised concerns that such deceptive audio, known as a deepfake, could become prevalent this election season. Last year, the Republican National Committee used the technology to generate a video with images of doomsday scenarios after Mr. Biden announced his re-election bid. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump, his political rival, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official. …

“The political deepfake moment is here,” Robert Weissman, the president of the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “Policymakers must rush to put in place protections or we’re facing electoral chaos.”