The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a $6 million fine in connection with an AI-generated robocall campaign targeting New Hampshire voters just ahead of that state’s Democratic Presidential Primary Election in January.
According to a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture issued by the Commission in late May, Steve Kramer was responsible for generating thousands of illegal prerecorded voice robocalls using misleading and inaccurate caller ID information, in violation of the Truth in Caller ID Act. The caller ID transmitted with the calls actually belonged to the spouse of a prominent New Hampshire Democratic political operative who had no knowledge of the calls and had not consented to its use.
Further, Kramer’s illegal robocall campaign relied on so-called deepfake generative artificial intelligence (AI) to create voice messages that imitated the voice of President Joseph Biden. Contrary to the Democratic Party’s efforts to encourage voters to write in Biden’s name on the Primary Election ballot, the robocall message encouraged people not to vote at all in the Primary.
Read the FCC’s Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture in connection with this case.