A political consultant identified as the individual who paid for a deepfake robocall created to impersonate US President Joe Biden has been indicted on charges of felony voter suppression as well as misdemeanor impersonation of a candidate.
Steven Kramer, who paid $150 for the deepfake, has now been fined $6 million by the Federal Communications Commission for the call, which urged people not to vote in New Hampshire's Democratic primary.
Kramer said he wrote the script for the call before paying someone to use AI to record it using the president's cloned voice.
He then hired a telemarketing firm to play the recording to voters over the phone.
Kramer's goal reportedly was to get Biden supporters to stay home, aiming for a low voter turnout, and to give Rep. Dean Phillips a greater chance of challenging Biden for the presidential nomination in New Hampshire.
Kramer expressed no remorse for creating the deepfake that led to several investigations.
He said he planned his scheme from the beginning to call attention to the dangers of AI in the political sphere, adding that more enforcement will be necessary to try to stop others from replicating what he did.
In addition to Kramer being fined, the FCC has proposed that Lingo Telecom, the voice service provider that was used, be fined $2 million for transmitting the calls and labeling them incorrectly.
This Cyber News was published on www.darkreading.com. Publication date: Wed, 29 May 2024 18:25:13 +0000