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.”

“Three men currently staying at a homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie said they were among a group of 15 recruited a few days ago to portray homeless veterans displaced from upstate hotels by incoming migrants,” the Albany Times Union reports.

Politico: “The accusation that about 20 veterans were tossed from a Newburgh hotel in Orange County to make way for the asylum-seekers drew national headlines and broad condemnation. But the claims soon began to unravel when the hotel showed proof that it was not housing homeless veterans and that no one was displaced when the migrants arrived.”

“Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has admitted to a ‘dirty trick’ that his campaign used to suppress the Hispanic vote during the city’s 1993 mayoral race,” The Guardian reports.

Said Giuliani, in a conversation with Steve Bannon and Kari Lake: “So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic neighborhoods.”

“Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell held a call with a pair of Russian pranksters posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy,” Bloomberg reports.

“Apparently thinking he was speaking to Zelenskiy, the video shows Powell answering questions on topics ranging from the outlook for inflation to the Russian central bank. There were several clips lasting about 15 minutes and it’s unclear if the footage was altered.”

“A virtual event with Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was canceled on Thursday after the Zoom video conference was ‘hijacked’ by a participant who displayed pornographic images,” Reuters reports.

Matteo Wong: “The field of artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly since the 2018 deepfake panic, and synthetic media is once again the center of attention. The technology buzzword of 2022 is generative AI: models that seem to display humanlike creativity, turning text prompts into astounding images or commanding English at the level of a mediocre undergraduate.”

“These and other advances have experts concerned that a deepfake apocalypse is still very much on the horizon. Fake video and audio might once again be poised to corrupt the most basic ways in which people process reality—or what’s left of it.”

“Nearly 20 months after allegations of unwanted sexual advances derailed his campaign for New York City mayor, Scott Stringer sued one of his accusers for defamation on Monday, arguing that she smeared his reputation with falsehoods and misrepresentations,” the New York Times reports.