The Guy Behind That Biden AI Deepfake Robocall Is Going To Go Through Some Things

Legal Issues

from the good-luck dept

Last month you probably saw the story about how somebody used a (sloppy) deepfake of Joe Biden in a bid to try and trick voters into staying home during the Presidential Primary. It wasn’t particularly well done; nor was it clear it reached all that many people or had much of an actual impact.

But it clearly spooked the government. FCC robocall enforcement is generally fairly feckless for reasons we’ve well discussed (short version: having strict enforcement and rules might upset corporate American debt collectors and marketing departments that use many of the same tactics as robocall scammers).

But in this case it took all of a week or two before the FCC, in cooperation with state AGs, had tracked down the culprit: a “veteran political consultant working for a rival candidate” by the name of Steve Kramer. In comments to NBC, Kramer make it rather clear that he doesn’t really quite understand the width and breadth of the tornado dumpster fire about to fall on his head:

“In a statement and interview with NBC News, 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.

“I’m not afraid to testify, I know why I did everything,” he said an interview late Sunday, his first since coming forward. “If a House oversight committee wants me to testify, I’m going to demand they put it on TV because I know more than them.”

While U.S. regulators are pretty feckless about robocall enforcement (especially if you’re a large company that might prove difficult to defeat in court), they’re going to nail a small fry like this to a tree in the town square to make a point.

Kramer, a well known player in Albany politics who helped the short-lived Ye campaign, appears to believe he’ll be able to tap dance around his coming legal woes by insisting that he was some kind of avante garde revolutionary or activist:

“Kramer claimed he planned the fake robocall from the start as an act of civil disobedience to call attention to the dangers of AI in politics. He compared himself to American Revolutionary heroes Paul Revere and Thomas Paine. He said more enforcement is necessary to stop people like him from doing what he did.

“This is a way for me to make a difference, and I have,” he said in the interview. “For $500, I got about $5 million worth of action, whether that be media attention or regulatory action.”

Indeed.

How much of a kick to the crotch Kramer will experience is hard to parse out, but he’s not going to have fun. The usually fairly feckless FCC is making a precedent-shifting change for his “act of civil disobedience,” declaring AI-generated robocalls illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which they already use to combat robocalls.

Usually the FCC (technically the FTC) sucks at collecting robocall fines because scammers (and legit companies) spoof their numbers and identities, making them hard to track down. In this case, Kramer is openly bragging about what he did, so I’d imagine the fine will be very large and hard to avoid.

For reference, right-wing propagandists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were fined $5,134,500 for 1,141 illegal robocalls the duo made in a bid to confuse and mislead state voters. I’d suspect that this fine will be bigger. Kramer will also likely face a litany of lawsuits, and whatever additional charges the federal government can drum up to make an example of him. Which he claims is what he wanted, so enjoy.

Filed Under: consumer protection, deepfake, fcc, joe biden, politics, ratfuckery, robocalls, tcpa