Freshly Indicted Biden Deepfaker Prompts Uncharacteristically Fast FCC Action On AI Political Robocalls
from the careful-what-you-wish-for dept
Earlier this year you probably saw the story about how a political consultant 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, which was already nervously watching AI get quickly integrated in global political propaganda and disinformation efforts.
The Biden deepfake quickly resulted in an uncharacteristically efficient joint investigation by the FCC and state AGs leading to multiple culprits, including Life Corp., a Texas telecom marketing company, a political consultant by the name Steve Kramer, and a magician named Paul Carpenter, who apparently “holds a world record in straitjacket escapes.”
But Kramer was the “mastermind” of the effort, and when busted back in February, claimed to NBC News that he was secretly trying to prompt regulatory action on robocalls, likening himself to American Revolutionary heroes Paul Revere and Thomas Paine (seriously):
“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.”
This week Kramer was indicted in New Hampshire, and now faces five counts that include bribery, intimidation and suppression. Now that he’s been formally indicted, Kramer, likely heeding the advice of counsel, is significantly less chatty than he was earlier this year.
Whether he’s telling the truth about his intentions or not, Kramer has gotten his wish. The whole mess has prompted numerous new AI-related efforts by the historically somewhat feckless FCC. Back in February, the FCC proposed a new rule declaring such calls illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which it already uses to combat robocalls (often badly).
And this week, the FCC announced it would also be considering new rules requiring disclosure of the use of AI in political ads:
“As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible, the Commission wants to make sure consumers are fully informed when the technology is used,” [FCC boss Jessica] Rosenworcel said in a news release. “Today, I’ve shared with my colleagues a proposal that makes clear consumers have a right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they see, and I hope they swiftly act on this issue.”
We’ve explored in great detail how the FCC has been a bit of a feckless mess when it comes to the policing of robocalls. In part because it’s had its legal authority chipped away by industry lobbying and dodgy court rulings for years, but also because big telecom giants (affixed to our domestic surveillance apparatus) and “legit” marketing companies lobby revolving door regulators for rule loopholes.
Everything the FCC does, however wimpy, inevitably faces a major court challenge by corporations keen on making money off of whatever the FCC is trying to protect the public from. It’s why in the year 2024 scammers and scumbags have rendered our voice communications networks nearly unusable. Hopefully the FCC’s efforts to combat AI deep fake political robocalls results in a more productive outcome.
Filed Under: ai, automation, deepfake, disinformation, fcc, misinformation, politics, propaganda, robocalls
Comments on “Freshly Indicted Biden Deepfaker Prompts Uncharacteristically Fast FCC Action On AI Political Robocalls”
The robocallerz can use whatever they like, I still will not answer. More people should just ignore the stupid calls, would it stop if it made no money? I laugh at their meager attempts at leaving a message, most do not because it is not important. The phone has been made almost useless by the ‘free market’ and juvenile business failures.
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Like spam or advertising or any other scam, it only takes a millionth of a percent of dupes to respond to keep sich things alive. It’s nearly impossible to lower the number of people engaging (even unsuccessfully) with such trash. At thispoint i wouldn’t be surprised if there were more “scammers” than”suckers”.
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Escalate
They caught him red-handed this time, and it all happened within U.S. boarders. But I wonder what happens in the future when they route the deepfake from an overseas robocall outfit, through a voip gateway, and out to voters phones? Will the FCC have the courage then to tell the telecom lobbyists “we don’t care how much money you make to transmit the call, shut it down” ?
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So who are these U.S. boarders, and from where in the U.S. do they hail?
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It’s not my nature to ask such things but i rented them a room in my house in London for a few weeks while they were trying to find a new job.
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“So who are these U.S. boarders, and from where in the U.S. do they hail?”
Not sure but I would guess they reside somewhere near a border.
I have read that some of these boarders are creating a wall somewhere, perhaps they’re using boards to board up a wall of sorts on the border .. but I don’t know for sure, it has become somewhat boring all the boarding at the border it has.
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L
'... You know what, let this one through.'
Everything the FCC does, however wimpy, inevitably faces a major court challenge by corporations keen on making money off of whatever the FCC is trying to protect the public from. It’s why in the year 2024 scammers and scumbags have rendered our voice communications networks nearly unusable. Hopefully the FCC’s efforts to combat AI deep fake political robocalls results in a more productive outcome.
While telecom companies may throw fits over most anti-robocall regulatory attempts if they have anyone even remotely intelligent in their legal departments I suspect that they’ll let this one pass as opposing regulations aimed at reducing election fraud during an election year is the sort of PR black-eye no sane company would want.
That said I also wouldn’t put it past them to try anyway due to overwhelming greed and the possibility that this even might cost them money they could have made from scammers down the line, so who knows?
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Does PR really even matter to telecoms? They do whatever the fuck they want, we all get pissed, and they walk away with our money.
I agree that robo calls will only stop when they don’t return a profit for the scammers. But what’s their cost? A fee hundred dollars for a robo dialer and maybe $2.00 an hour for staff for the scam center.
But like spam emails, all it takes is 1 or 2 people sending them money and they’ve made a profit.
One solution could be for the phone companies to charge 1 cent per call. This is nothing for the average person, but if a scammer is making millions of calls, then this starts to add up.
The other solution is to figure out which phone companies connect overseas scammers to the US. Do those phone companies know the calls come from acammers? And if so, does their profit outweigh shutting down the scammers?
Re: does their profit outweigh shutting down the scammers?
Yes.
Do they care?
No.
They are too big to care.
Re: Charging is a non-starter
Charging 1 cent per call is just as bad an idea as charging 1 cent per email. We have considered both of these ideas someone has brought them up; we have examined them thoroughly; and not only will they not work, they will make the situation worse. MUCH worse.
I’m not going to recapitulate the entire (lengthy) set of reasons explaining this: it’s readily available online to anyone with modest search engine skills. I’ll just point out one of the many reasons that this should be instantly rejected:
We’re talking about scammers here. Why in the world would you believe for even a microsecond that these people would actually allow themselves to be charged? Don’t you think it’s far more likely that they’d, oh, I don’t know, SCAM SOMEONE and stick them with the bill?
Robocalls are universally unwanted, political or not.
I’m sure there’s an issue here, and that we can draw a distinction between bad political robocalls, and the rest of the robocalls, or even scam calls. But why do so? I’m certain that most people regard scams, unsolicited sales robocalls or similar, and political robocalls as being the same thing: unwanted spam. And yet we privilege the political ones. I’m sorry, I would rather talk to an “honest” scammer than hear from a politician, whether they’re “real” or simulated.
And are we going to allow “real” simulations? “Hi, I’m xxx and I want to tell you about” … if they authorized the use of their simulated voice? Or simulated sales pitches, no human involved? Why allow any of this, and disallow us from opting out / screening them effectively?
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I agree. Robocalls should be completely banned EXCEPT for emergency announcements from city/state/federal entities — and even those should have to get by some layers of vetting before they’re allowed, so that we don’t get 3 a day (which would quickly cause everyone to ignore them and thus render them useless).
For the ban to be effective, it has to be in the criminal, not civil, code. Robocalling operations can postpone and duck civil litigation indefinitely, and they can avoid fines quite effectively. People need to go to prison — for a LONG time — for this. The punishment has to be severe enough that they fear it, because they most certainly don’t fear FCC or FTC or other non-criminal enforcement.
stop em easy
So, every dev8ce on a network has a unique identifier. If only there was some way to make some type of things like maybe a bouncer, say, who would check those id’s for every single call.
And maybe that bouncer, for lack of any better term all, pity we don’t have any tech that could do this, like maybe an intelligence engine or some clockwork device, that could limit the number of calls per hour that each device can call to say, oh. I dunno, 100?
Just a damn shame there’s no magic spell or anything that can do this.
/s
He should have just shot a random black dude. He’d get a paid vacation instead of a charge.
Let’s just start having the impeachment BEFORE the election, since neither party seems to be too inclined to vet their own candidates. That would also eliminate all that tedious “stumping” nonsense, and we could shorten the election process considerably. Stream the whole thing live, and people would be able to see what they were getting themselves into by voting for any of these clowns.
Easiest solution:
Ban all political advertising, except for billboard signs.
Deepfake that boys. 🙂
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LOL re billboards:
GEORGE CONWAY BILLBOARD CALLS TRUMP ‘PSYCHO’
https://www.local3news.com/regional-national/raw-fl-george-conway-billboard-calls-trump-psycho/video_79bfb8e4-445d-5be3-acad-35f3614095a5.html
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Truth in advertising for once.