Dear John,

We knew it was bound to happen, but now the future is upon us: The first deceptive “deepfake” robocalls in a Presidential election went out just before the New Hampshire primary, in a ham-handed attempt to discourage Democratic voters from turning out.

“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” says the Biden doppelganger, generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to sound much like the real thing. “What a bunch of malarkey.”

“Save your vote for the November election,” the voice continues. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

This one didn’t make much sense, but in a contest where Biden wasn’t even on the ballot it may have confused a few voters into not showing up. Which is all a deepfake really needs to do: It doesn’t need to make us believe anything is true, it’s enough just to make us believe we don’t know what’s true and what’s not.

Alarmed by this trend in its earliest stages, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Susan Collins have introduced the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, bipartisan legislation to ban the use of A.I. to generate false depictions of candidates to influence elections.

Now that the deepfakes are here, sign the petition and tell Congress to pass legislation to combat the dangerous and deceptive use of A.I. in political campaigning now!

Noting the potential danger of deepfakes to both parties, Senators Klobuchar and Collins contacted the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to ask for help in fighting deepfakes in state and local elections.

“We are already seeing A.I. being used to target candidates and voters from both parties,” the senators wrote. “As this year’s primary elections are now underway, it is critical that those who administer our elections have the information necessary to address these emerging threats.”

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign says, “Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.”

The realism of these A.I. forgeries can be downright terrifying, and the danger extends beyond electioneering. Falsified declarations of war, criminal confessions, trying to find “one more vote than we have,” anything that can be seen or heard can become widely viewed and accepted before it’s recognized as false -- if it ever is.

Click here to sign the petition and encourage Congress to act quickly to create a legal framework that will address these emerging threats.

Thank you for working to maintain some sense of reality in our political lives.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action