Political Scammer Fined $6 Million For AI Deepfake Robocalls Using Voice of Joe Biden

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States of America proposed a $6 million fine for deepfake robocalls that imitated President Joe Biden’s voice and encouraged voters not to vote in the New Hampshire primary held on January 21.

The document, issued by the FCC on May 23, accuses political consultant Steve Kramer of the illegal calls that spread false information among potential voters.

Kramer, who had been working for Biden’s Democratic opponent Dean Phillips, publicly—and seemingly without remorse—admitted to being the one behind the robocalls in an interview with NBC News in February, after a New Orleans magician proved to an NBC reporter that he had been hired to make the recording.

When residents accepted the call two days before the elections, they heard Biden’s voice discouraging them from voting, including the phrase “save your vote for the November election.” Kramer and his team were allegedly able to breach the Truth in Caller ID Act “by maliciously spoofing the number of a prominent local political consultant,” according to the FCC’s press release.

The release also says that Kramer hired Voice Broadcasting Corp., which used Life Corp.’s services to make the calls through Lingo Telecom. Lingo Telecom is also being fined for “failing to utilize reasonable ‘Know Your Customer’ protocols to verify caller ID information.”

“We will act swiftly and decisively to ensure that bad actors cannot use U.S. telecommunications networks to facilitate the misuse of generative AI technology to interfere with elections, defraud consumers, or compromise sensitive data,” said Chief of the Enforcement Bureau and chair of the Privacy and Data Protection Task Force, Loyaan A. Egal.

According to TechCrunch, the proposed penalty issued by the FCC is “more about robocalls than AI, but the agency is clearly positioning this as a warning to other would-be high-tech scammers.” Since there are no criminal proceedings yet, this fine acts more as a frame to impose power as an authority institution on robocalls and to hold scammers accountable for AI-generated violations that aim to spread misinformation.