An AI-Cloned Biden Voice Told New Hampshire Voters to Stay Home
What happened
In January 2024, voters in New Hampshire began receiving a robocall that sounded like President Joe Biden. The voice told them not to vote in the upcoming primary. It urged them to save their vote for the November general election instead, a message that, if followed, would have quietly removed them from a contested presidential primary without their knowledge that they were being deceived.
The call was a fabrication. Audio experts who examined the recording identified it as AI-generated, with voice synthesis tools from ElevenLabs used to replicate the president's cadence and tone. Biden had not recorded the call, approved it, or known it existed. A multistate investigation later traced its origin to a company in Texas, and the synthetic voice was indistinguishable enough from the real one that recipients had no ready way to tell the difference.
The person who commissioned the call was Steve Kramer, a Texas-based political consultant working for Dean Phillips, a Democratic candidate running against Biden in the primary. Kramer later acknowledged his role and framed the robocall as an act of civil disobedience, a way to draw attention to the dangers AI posed to electoral integrity. The stated intent did not change what the call actually did: it used a cloned version of the sitting president's voice to steer voters away from the polls.
ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski responded publicly, calling the incident a misuse of the company's audio tools and pledging an investigation. In March 2024, the League of Women Voters filed suit against Kramer on behalf of three voters who had received the call, arguing it interfered with their right to participate in the election.
The incident exposed a gap that no investigation could retroactively close. Before that call went out, nothing required anyone to document what model generated the audio, who authorized it, or whether the depicted person had consented. The verification happened only after the damage was done, traced backward through journalism and litigation. A provable record of what a system did, who commissioned the output, and when it was released would have made accountability possible at the moment of production rather than months later in a courtroom.
Reported impact
- Affected parties
- Not publicly disclosed
- Harm type
- Not publicly disclosed
- Scale
- Not publicly disclosed
- Financial impact
- Not publicly disclosed
- Regulatory action
- Not publicly disclosed
Classification
Relevant governance controls
Governance control mapping is not available for this record.
- No controls mapped
Not publicly disclosed
Control mapping is analytical. It does not state that any control would have prevented the incident.
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index. The event is also catalogued in the following database, which is listed for cross-reference.