Concerns about AI fakes in the election campaign: Biden’s voice calls on people to abstain from voting

False election campaign calls from US President Joe Biden fuel fears of manipulation using artificial intelligence in the race for the White House. In the automated calls, a voice confusingly similar to Biden’s called on Democrats in New Hampshire not to participate in the US state’s primaries.

Such so-called robocalls are a common tool for election campaigns in the US. Sender information on the calls was also spoofed to make it appear as if they came from a political committee of Biden’s Democratic Party, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office said Monday.

Artificial intelligence software can be trained to speak arbitrary sentences using the voices of specific people using audio recordings. Robocalls are an attractive target for such manipulations because they are difficult to monitor, American political expert Ian Beerder told American broadcaster CNBC on Monday. He warned that it is also relatively easy online to spread false information to many people using an “army of bots”.

There are also concerns about the ability to use software to create targeted images – and now short videos – with any content. Until now, errors were often visible in the artificially generated images, but the technology is improving rapidly.

(sda/dpa)