New Hampshire AG dings business, phone company over fake Biden election calls

A robocall that cloned President Joe Biden’s voice and encouraged New Hampshire voters to sit out the state’s January primary has been traced back to a pair of alleged culprits: a Texas-based business and a local telecom provider that both now face cease-and-desist demands.

According to the Granite State’s attorney general, Lingo Telecom transmitted robocalls placed by Life Corporation that told residents, in Biden’s voice, “your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

New Hampshire AG John M. Formella said his office immediately began investigating the incident, which led to Lingo. Once Lingo became aware of the investigation, it suspended service to Life Corp. and owner Walter Monk, Formella said.

“AI-generated recordings used to deceive voters have the potential to have devastating effects on the democratic election process,” Formella said in a statement. “Ensuring public confidence in the electoral process is vital.”

The AG’s office slapped Life Corp. with a cease-and-desist letter Tuesday, ordering that the company stop “engaging in voter suppression by knowingly attempting to prevent or deter another person from voting or registering to vote based on fraudulent, deceptive, misleading, or spurious grounds or information.”

The Federal Communications Commission also took action Tuesday against Lingo Telecom, demanding that the carrier “immediately stop supporting unlawful robocall traffic on its networks.” If it fails to do so, the agency may require all other carriers to block Lingo traffic from their networks, effectively hobbling it as an interconnected provider.

According to the FCC, Lingo and Life both previously landed in the feds’ crosshairs for allegedly enabling robocall traffic. In 2003, the FCC said, it hit Lingo with a “citation for delivering apparently illegal prerecorded and unsolicited advertisements to residential lines.”

More recently, an industry watchdog group identified Lingo as a “gateway provider” that transmitted illegal international robocalls into the US, and “demanded that Lingo take steps to protect its network,” according to the FCC letter. And the Federal Trade Commission handed down a cease-and-desist demand in 2022.

“The increasing reliance on AI-generated voices to deceive the public, including as part of election disinformation campaigns, is a rapidly growing problem,” Loyaan A. Egal, chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, said in a statement. “We will utilize every tool available to ensure that US communications networks are not used to facilitate the harmful misuse of AI technologies.”

As Tech Brew recently reported, AI-generated voice calls are an increasing threat to democracy when they mimic public figures. The technology can also be convincingly used to impersonate individuals in extortion schemes. To decrease personal risk, experts recommend using an automated voicemail prompt and establishing a safe word with loved ones.