According to a report by World Wide Web on January 23, voters in New Hampshire in the United States reported that they recently received an automated message call from "President Biden" telling the recipient not to vote for Trump in the New Hampshire primary on the 23rd local time. The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office attaches great importance to this attempt to interfere with the election. Preliminary indications are that the call was generated by artificial intelligence. The originator of the call and the number of voters covered are still unknown.
It is reported that the AI voice call began with Biden's catchphrase "What a piece of nonsense" (Whatabunchofmalarkey), saying that "Tuesday's (23rd) vote will only allow Republicans to re-elect Donald Trump (Donald Trump). Your vote will be decisive in November, not this Tuesday."
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded on the 22nd, "That phone call was indeed fake, and President (Biden) did not record it. I can confirm this." The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office stated that it is conducting an "active and ongoing" investigation into these "deceptive" information, and said that this information may be "an illegal attempt to undermine the New Hampshire primary and suppress New Hampshire voters." A spokesman for the Trump campaign also denied any connection to the calls.
The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office investigation follows a complaint from a prominent Democrat in the state whose personal cell phone number appeared on the caller ID screens of voters who answered "Biden" calls, according to previous reports.
The "Biden" robocall messages voters received ended with a phone number belonging to the aforementioned former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan, who now runs a super PAC supporting Democratic campaigns.
Sullivan said the call was a vicious slander against President Biden: "I hope the instigator stops. You shouldn't tell voters whether they should vote or not. This is crazy. It is infringing on our democracy. It is wrong. I think it is an unforgivable mistake."
An analysis by the New Hampshire Information and Analysis Center (NHIAC) said it was necessary to warn those who "disrupt, suppress or prevent voter participation" in the New Hampshire primary, and expressed concern about the use of artificial intelligence to spread false narratives and influence public opinion about candidates or campaigns.
There is precedent for artificial intelligence interfering in elections. During the 2002 U.S. Senate election, when Sullivan was then chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, two Republican officials, including the state Republican Party executive director and a Republican National Committee staffer, were convicted of using computer-generated phone calls to disrupt the normal operations of a Democratic get-out-the-vote call center.
Coincidentally, on the eve of the 2023 Chicago mayoral election, Chicago Lakefront News released a video criticizing moderate Democrat Paul Vallas for turning a blind eye to the shooting. Although the Varas campaign denounced the video as being generated by AI, the video has been widely circulated on the Internet. Valas' eventual campaign failure may also have had something to do with the negative impact the video had on him.
Renee DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, mentioned in an interview with the Guardian that given that the introduction of federal regulations to regulate AI in the United States is still far away, education can be the first short-term measure to reduce interference in politics. People have begun to realize that we are entering an era where videos can be faked.
However, it is unrealistic to expect everyone to be able to tell the difference between true and false information on social platforms. Therefore, the platform must take certain regulatory measures to identify and prompt AI-produced content, such as social platforms and generative artificial intelligence companies collaborating to identify and label AI-generated image content. OpenAI has launched new measures to prohibit users from setting up programs to interfere in political campaigns and lobbying activities, and prohibiting the creation of content that impersonates candidates or local governments.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said that out of the desire to strengthen and safeguard the democratic process, Democrats chose to shift the location of the first primary election from New Hampshire to South Carolina, which has a more diverse population, to amplify the voices of voters of color.
As one of Biden's intra-party rivals, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips criticized Biden for not participating in the New Hampshire primary on January 20, calling Biden "weak and incompetent and unelectable" to build momentum for himself and compete for the Democratic nomination. In an interview, he said that there was large-scale corruption and lack of transparency in the primary election, and that the current words and deeds of the Democratic Party on practicing, protecting and maintaining democracy are inconsistent.
Currently, Democratic leaders are working closely with the Biden campaign to build his reelection campaign and organize it in a way that will help him win the nomination. The Biden campaign announced in October that he would not appear on the state's primary ballot. The Democratic National Committee postponed the New Hampshire primary this year.
The Democratic National Committee's rules also give state party leaders significant power over who to nominate on primary ballots. As a result, state parties in four states—Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Tennessee—have asked their states to name Biden as their sole candidate in the upcoming Democratic primaries. The move sparked strong dissatisfaction with the party's main rivals, Phillips and author Marianne Williamson.
According to FiveThirtyEight Democratic Party polls, as of January 20, Biden's support rate in the New Hampshire primary has left second place Phillips by nearly 40 percentage points. Although the Democratic Party is far less intense than the Republican Party in terms of intra-party competition, the donkey-elephant dispute between the two parties is still interesting. Biden's overall approval rating among the American people has continued to decline since 2021, and as of January 22, 2024, it has dropped to less than 40%. Continuously falling national approval ratings could expose Biden to criticism from rivals in the primaries.