UPDATE 2/6: The calls have now been traced to a mysterious company in Texas called Life Corporation, according to New Hampshire’s Attorney General, who said his office is still investigating whether tech from ElevenLabs was involved.
Original Story:
Last week, a call went out to a number of New Hampshire voters urging them to not vote in the state’s presidential primary. The call, which sounded as though it was from President Biden, was in fact a deepfake created using tools made by ElevenLabs.
Voice-fraud detection company Pindrop Security Inc, which analyzed the audio, named ElevenLabs’ technology as the creator of the deepfake, Bloomberg reports. ElevenLabs announced an $80 million financing round from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, earlier this week, bringing the startup’s value to an estimated $1.1 billion.
ElevenLabs traced the deepfake to a specific user and suspended their account. The company allows users to create voice clones of public figures like President Biden; however, it says that it can only be done to “express humor or mockery in a way that it is clear to the listener that what they are hearing is a parody.”
The call in question was presented in such a way that voters might have been unaware that it was not actually Biden speaking on the line. The Attorney General in New Hampshire is currently investigating the call, which appears “to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters.”
“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” the voice mimicking Biden said in the call. “Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”
The call creators also made it appear that the calls were coming from the personal cell phone of Kathy Sullivan, a former Democratic Party chair in the state.