The wireless provider that allowed deepfake robocalls of President Joe Biden to be transmitted to potential voters in New Hampshire during that state’s Democratic primaries has settled with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), according to an announcement from the commission Wednesday. Texas-based Lingo Telecom will pay a civil penalty of $1 million in the settlement over the voter suppression effort. The controversy over fake Biden calls originally kicked off when a political consultant named Steve Kramer was hired by the presidential campaign of Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota who unsuccessfully tried to beat Biden for the nomination of his party.
Kramer reportedly used AI cloning tech to make calls that sounded like President Biden, including a script that made it sound like he didn’t want his supporters to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary this past January. Lingo Telecom didn’t create the robocalls but did allow them to be transmitted on its network, which the FCC says is in violation of the agency’s so-called “Know Your Customer” (KYC) and “Know Your Upstream Provider” (KYUP) rules. The Phillips campaign said Kramer was acting independently and that it didn’t know about or authorize the fake Biden calls.
Kramer’s final penalty remains pending with the FCC, though he faces a proposed $6 million fine. Incredibly, the fake robocalls were both a high-risk endeavor and showed very little reward for the candidate they.