Deepfakes

Releasing an audio recording of a special counsel’s interview with President Joe Biden could spur deepfakes and disinformation that trick Americans, the Justice Department said, conceding the U.S. government could not stop the misuse of artificial intelligence ahead of this year’s election.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) pushed back against the release of audio recordings of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, citing concerns that “deep fakes” could emerge.

DOJ argued, in a Friday night filing, that if the audio were released, it could end up being altered and passed off as an “authentic” recording which would be shared widely. 

The Justice Department is using the Biden administration’s invocation of executive privilege to fight a lawsuit by multiple parties that seek to gain access to the audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The video message from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes warmly greeted the scores of election workers who had gathered at a Phoenix-area hotel in December for a first-of-its-kind drill: “We are very excited that all of you are here,” Fontes, a Democrat, began. “You are on the front lines, and this exercise is a prime opportunity for you to hone your skills by experiencing new challenges as a team.” He wished them luck.

This year’s presidential election will be the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new content, including images, audio, and video — became widely available. That’s raising fears that millions of voters could be deceived by a barrage of political deepfakes.

But, while Congress has done little to address the issue, states are moving aggressively to respond — though questions remain about how effective any new measures to combat AI-created disinformation will be.

It’s Election Day in Arizona and elderly voters in Maricopa County are told by phone that local polling places are closed due to threats from militia groups.

Meanwhile, in Miami, a flurry of photos and videos on social media show poll workers dumping ballots.

The phone calls in Arizona and the videos in Florida turn out to be “deepfakes” created with artificial intelligence tools. But by the time local and federal authorities figure out what they are dealing with, the false information has gone viral across the country.

Some of the technology industry’s leading companies have teamed up to combat deceptive uses of artificial intelligence to spread misinformation in the 2024 elections.

A group of 20 tech companies announced on Friday they have agreed to work together to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence content from interfering with elections across the globe this year.

The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can create text, images and video in seconds in response to prompts, has heightened fears that the new technology could be used to sway major elections this year, as more than half of the world's population is set to head to the polls.

Under pressure from the White House and governments around the globe, major technology companies pledged Friday to crack down on artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes that could undermine the integrity of major democratic elections in the U.S. and overseas this year.

Google, Meta, TikTok and other companies said they would join forces to create tools to detect and debunk election deepfakes. They unveiled the accord as political and security leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

The board, which is run independently of Meta and funded through a grant by the company, described the policy as “incoherent, lacking in persuasive justification and inappropriately focused on how content has been created, rather than on which specific harms it aims to prevent.”

The recommendation came as part of the board’s review of Meta’s decision to leave up a manipulated video of President Biden on Facebook that was edited to make it appear as though he was inappropriately touching his granddaughter.