U.S. telecom firm fined $1m for fake Biden AI campaign call

A U.S. telecommunications company has been fined one million dollars for sending a campaign call featuring a fake voice of U.S. President, Joe Biden, generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Wednesday that Lingo Telecom agreed to pay the fine and had also committed to a unique programme to verify the trustworthiness of customers who use its networks to transmit data.

The fraudulent call, with a voice that sounded deceptively like Biden’s, was used to call voters in the US state of New Hampshire in January and urge them not to participate in the Democratic Party’s primary election.

The voice of Biden in the call was generated using AI software and the sender information was also falsified, making it appear to come from a Democratic political committee.

“Every one of us deserves to know that the voice on the line is exactly who they claim to be.

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“If AI is being used, that should be made clear to any consumer, citizen, and voter who encounters it,’’ FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said.

In May, the FCC proposed a fine of 6 million dollars for the originator of the call, a political consultant.

The incident raised concerns in the U.S. about the potential misuse of AI, especially in the run-up to the presidential election in November.

As a result, the FCC has strengthened the legal framework for taking action against such AI fakes