Daily Beast: “Another deceptively cut video of President Joe Biden is being circulated by right-wing pundits and media outlets.”

Washington Post: “The 80th anniversary of D-Day quickly became the latest example of the fast spread of politically damaging manipulated videos, highlighting how the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the water’s edge — and seem certain to continue through November.”

“In edited videos, Republican officials and allies of former president Donald Trump repeatedly tried to turn Biden’s Normandy visit into a highlight reel of senior moments and missteps, aimed at showing the president as infirm, addled or out of his depth. Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, has also repeatedly attacked Biden over his age and fitness, and regularly shares videos of the president looking frail.”

Los Angeles Times: “In the analog days of the 1970s, long before hackers, trolls and edgelords, an audiocassette company came up with an advertising slogan that posed a trick question: “Is it live or is it Memorex?” The message toyed with reality, suggesting there was no difference in sound quality between a live performance and music recorded on tape.”

“Fast forward to our age of metaverse lies and deceptions, and one might ask similar questions about what’s real and what’s not: Is President Biden on a robocall telling Democrats to not vote? Is Donald Trump chumming it up with Black men on a porch? Is the U.S. going to war with Russia? Fact and fiction appear interchangeable in an election year when AI-generated content is targeting voters in ways that were once unimaginable.”

“American politics is accustomed to chicanery — opponents of Thomas Jefferson warned the public in 1800 that he would burn their Bibles if elected — but artificial intelligence is bending reality into a video game world of avatars and deepfakes designed to sow confusion and chaos.”

“Conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have agreed to pay $1 million to the New York attorney general’s office and others for running a voter suppression campaign targeting Black voters during the 2020 election,” CNN reports.

Wired: “As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the U.S. are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.”

“All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of ‘data elements’ on every single US citizen.”

Experts war-gamed what might happen if deepfakes disrupt the 2024 election, but things went sideways fast, NBC News reports.

“Steve Kramer, a veteran political consultant working for a rival candidate, acknowledged Sunday that he commissioned the robocall impersonating President Joe Biden with artificial intelligence,” NBC News reports.

“Kramer expressed no remorse for creating the deepfake, in which an imitation of the president’s voice discouraged participation in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. The call launched several law enforcement investigations and provoked outcry from election officials and watchdogs.”

The Federal Communications Commission ruled on Thursday that robocalls using voices generated by artificial intelligence are illegal, amid concerns over how the cutting-edge technology is being used to scam people and deceive voters, NPR reports.

Foreign Affairs: “Nearly eight years after Russian operatives attempted to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, U.S. democracy has become even less safe, the country’s information environment more polluted, and the freedom of speech of U.S. citizens more at risk.”

“Disinformation—the deliberate spread of false or misleading information—was never the sole domain of foreign actors, but its use by domestic politicians and grifters has ballooned in recent years. And yet the country has been unable to rein it in because the very subject has become a partisan, politicized issue. Lawmakers have not been able to agree to common-sense reforms that would, for instance, require more transparency about the actions of social media companies or about the identity of online advertisers.”

“In the process, they have enabled an environment of hearsay, in which many people, particularly conservatives, have used false or misleading information to raise the specter of a vast government censorship regime. That chimera of censorship chills legitimate academic inquiry into disinformation, undermines public-private cooperation in investigating and addressing the problem, and halts crucial government responses. The result is an information ecosystem that is riper for manipulation than ever.”

“New Hampshire’s Attorney General on Tuesday named a Texas telecom company as the source of an apparently AI-generated robocall impersonating President Joe Biden that told Democrats not to vote in last month’s presidential primary,” NBC News reports.

“Days before a pivotal election in Slovakia to determine who would lead the country, a damning audio recording spread online in which one of the top candidates seemingly boasted about how he’d rigged the election,” CNN reports.

“And if that wasn’t bad enough, his voice could be heard on another recording talking about raising the cost of beer.”

“The recordings immediately went viral on social media, and the candidate, who is pro-NATO and aligned with Western interests, was defeated in September by an opponent who supported closer ties to Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

“While the number of votes swayed by the leaked audio remains uncertain, two things are now abundantly clear: The recordings were fake, created using artificial intelligence; and US officials see the episode in Europe as a frightening harbinger of the sort of interference the United States will likely experience during the 2024 presidential election.”

“There is still a lot we don’t know about the robocall in New Hampshire that impersonated President Joe Biden, likely using AI voice cloning technology,” Politico reports.

“The call went out on Jan. 21, two days before the primary, trying to discourage Democrats from heading to the polls. It’s not certain who was behind the call, what software was used in its creation, or how many voters got one. The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is investigating.”

“But it made one thing clear: The pressure is on for regulators to take action on deepfakes ahead of the election.”