When the New Hampshire Deep Fake Moment is Here: Cybercriminal Fraud Against Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C. During the White House Debate
But only a few bills have come out of these discussions. Several bills were sponsored by the Senator and Representative to forbid the use of artificial intelligence to create deceptive content like the Biden “robocall”. They’ve also sponsored a separate bill requiring political ads to disclose when they use AI.
In July of 2023, several tech companies, including Microsoft, Open Artificial Intelligence, andGoogle made voluntary commitments to watermark the video and photos that were manipulated by Artificial Intelligence to allow regular consumers to differentiate them from organically produced content. The administration issued an executive order with more guidance for companies that are developing artificial intelligence. Over the past few months, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has led a series of AI Insight Forums, inviting tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to meet with lawmakers and discuss regulation.
Over the weekend, voters in New Hampshire and New England received a call from a voice that sounded eerily like Biden, touting election “malarkey” and discouraging them to vote in the Tuesday primaries.
“The political deepfake moment is here,” said Robert Weissman, president of the progressive advocacy group Public Citizen, in a statement Monday. “Policymakers must rush to put in place protections, or we’re facing electoral chaos. The many ways deepfakes can sow confusion and perpetuate fraud are summed up by the New Hampshire deepfake.
In May, images seeming to show an attack on the Pentagon went viral on the social media site X. The fake images caused real impact: a dip in the stock market. As news of the conflict between Israel and Hamas flooded social platforms after October 7, fake images and videos of dead children and destroyed homes caused real outrage as experts and journalists scrambled to verify their authenticity.
On Tuesday, when voters in New Hampshire cast their ballots in their state’s election, WIRED followed the activity of one group of election-deniers, who spent the day spreading wild conspiracy and outrage.
One member wrote about someone hearing that voting machines inNewton were not working, and it was corruption already starting. ”Always cheating,” another added.
Throughout the day, in dozens of posts and hundreds of comments, the group’s members posted messages of support for each other’s efforts, reaffirming each other’s beliefs in the conspiracies despite no actual evidence of fraud.
There are over 6,500 members in the group, and they were all encouraged by the group’s founder to complete seven tasks throughout the day to ensure election security, including demanding information from poll workers, logging any discrepancies they come across, and monitoring whether everyone was being asked to provide ID when checking in to polling sites.
With the 2024 election on the horizon and former president Donald Trump once again on the ballot, the group is preparing for battle—and Tuesday was just a glimpse into what to expect in groups like these across the country come November, when the election takes place.
Founded in February 2021 by Marylyn Todd, the New Hampshire Voter Integrity group quickly gained traction as Trump and many within the Republican party were pushing false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Over the past few years, Todd and the administrators of the group have continued to push baseless conspiracies and wild allegations about voter fraud during the 2020 election—despite multiple government agencies confirming it was the safest and most secure election in US history. Todd has shared her views on a number of right-wing shows.
Though the group claims to be an election integrity group and not candidate specific, the vast majority of those posting and commenting during the primary were celebrating Trump’s victory over former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and had, in the hours before the results were announced, flagged concerns about what they saw as potential efforts to undermine Trump’s campaign.
The first controversy to crop up on Tuesday was the realization that Trump’s name wasn’t listed in the same place as the others on every single ballot in the state.
There was a lot of confusion about why this happened, but the reason, as the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office lays out on its website, is that each county picks a number out of a hat to decide which candidate is listed first, and the rest of the candidates follow in alphabetical order after that.
Reply to “Comment on ‘Construction of the MSSM at the D0 Reaction’” by S.E. Kac and A.R. Macaulay
Many other people jumped to the conclusion that it was some type of corruption, despite several group members explaining it to them in the comments.