Former consultant for Dean Phillips’ campaign admits to role in fake Biden robocall

A political consultant previously employed by Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips’ presidential campaign acknowledged Sunday that he was behind the robocall that used an AI-generated voice of President Joe Biden to urge New Hampshire voters not to participate in the state’s January 23 primary.

“The evening of Sunday, January 20th, 2 days before the New Hampshire primary, I sent out an automated call to 5,000 most likely to vote Democrats. Using easy to use online technology, an automated version of President Joe Biden voice was created,” Steve Kramer said in a statement, which was first reported by NBC News.

Paul Carpenter, a New Orleans street magician, told CNN in an interview that he was hired by Kramer, who was working for Phillips’ campaign at the time, to create the fake audio. Carpenter provided text messages, Venmo logs and other records to support his account.

Kramer’s statement also said the calls were generated using an artificial intelligence tool called ElevenLabs in “less than a half-hour,” and were distributed by Texas-based company Life Corporation, though he said the company had no knowledge of the robocall’s content.

The robocall, which was sent to more than 20,000 people in late January, marked the first major effort to use AI to imitate a US president in an attempt to suppress votes, and has spurred law enforcement investigations and worries about the future of AI’s impact on American politics.

CNN previously reported that the fake audio was created using ElevenLabs, according to two separate analyses by the security company Pindrop and by digital forensic experts at the University of California, Berkeley.

ElevenLabs previously issued a statement saying that it is “dedicated to preventing the misuse of audio AI tools” and that…