Deepfakes and synthetic voices are an increasing concern in state and local government. In the past week, four bills have been filed so far in the Hawai?i State Legislature to regulate or ban synthetic media in political ads and campaigns: - HB 1734 AI Disclosure in Political Ads: https://lnkd.in/g7ARVRDJ - HB 1766 Deepfake Election Integrity Protection: https://lnkd.in/gxvBMj6i - SB 2687 Deepfake Regulation in Elections: https://lnkd.in/gkFiDFCu - SB 2396 Deepfake Election Integrity Protection: https://lnkd.in/gVX8DRuh
A robocall used a deepfake of Joe Biden's voice to encourage New Hampshire voters to stay home. "It's important that you save your vote for the November election." It's not a perfect deepfake, but it doesn't necessarily need to be - for call recipients who don't understand what's happening, it has the potential to be enough to move the needle. It's not clear that this is the first time that this has happened, but it certainly won't be the last. It's also not clear how this might be prevented except to block robocalls entirely (and even then, one can imagine using a live agent with a deepfaked voice, so that every call would be different).
