The Fake-Biden Robocall — AI Voice Cloning, an Election, and the FCC

The Biden deepfake robocall was a wave of automated phone calls sent to New Hampshire voters on 21 January 2024, two days before the state's presidential primary, using an AI-generated voice made to sound like President Joe Biden and urging people not to vote. On 8 February the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a unanimous Declaratory Ruling that calls using AI-generated voices fall under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), making such calls without consent illegal. The political consultant behind the calls, Steve Kramer, was fined $6 million by the FCC, but a New Hampshire jury acquitted him of all state criminal charges on 13 June 2025.

It was an early, prominent US case of a generative-AI voice fake actually reaching voters, with regulators and the courts each responding in turn.

Sunday, 21 January

According to the FCC's forfeiture order, on Sunday 21 January, two days before the primary, thousands of potential voters received robocalls in which all but the last sentence was spoken in a voice artificially created to sound like Biden. The Associated Press reported that the message used his catchphrase "What a bunch of malarkey" and went on:

It's important that you save your vote for the November election. ... Your votes make a difference in November, not this Tuesday.

Prosecutors alleged it implied that voting in the primary would stop people from voting in November. The caller ID was spoofed: according to the FCC, the number displayed belonged to the spouse of a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair who was involved with a group encouraging write-in votes for Biden. That year, at Biden's request, the Democratic National Committee had removed New Hampshire from its traditional early slot; Biden did not put his name on the ballot and won as a write-in.

Who made it, and how

The FCC found that Kramer paid a New Orleans street magician $150 to create the Biden-like voice using software available through a website operated by ElevenLabs. The calls were placed by Voice Broadcasting using Life Corp.'s services, which had initiated 9,581 calls by 7:12 p.m. that evening. For some of the calls, the first provider in the call path was Lingo Telecom.

The FCC: AI voices are "artificial"

The ruling rests on the TCPA's restrictions on calls using an "artificial or prerecorded voice", and confirms that these cover current AI technologies that generate human voices. Such calls therefore need the prior express consent of the person called, absent an emergency or exemption. In its announcement the FCC explained that state attorneys general had previously been able to go after only the outcome of such calls, such as the fraud; now the act of using AI to generate the voice in a robocall was itself illegal, widening their tools. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said bad actors were using AI-generated voices to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities and misinform voters.

The September fine rested on the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibits spoofing caller ID with intent to defraud or cause harm. The FCC said that if Kramer did not pay within 30 days the matter would be referred to the Department of Justice for collection.

Acquittal in state court

In New Hampshire, Kramer was charged with 11 felony counts of voter suppression (each carrying up to seven years) and 11 counts of impersonating a candidate (each up to a year). According to the AP, he admitted orchestrating the calls and testified that he had meant them as a wake-up call about the dangers of AI. His defence argued that the primary was a meaningless straw poll unsanctioned by the DNC, so the voter-suppression law did not apply, and that he had not impersonated a candidate because the message did not name Biden and Biden was not a declared candidate. On 13 June 2025 the jury acquitted him of all charges. Attorney General John Formella said the state's commitment to enforcing election laws remained steadfast.

The AP also reported that Kramer said he would not pay the FCC fine.

Social impact

The case showed how cheap a convincing fake voice had become: according to the FCC record, it took $150 and commercially available software. Voters were not the only people at risk. The FCC framed its ruling around voice-cloning scams that mimic relatives to extract money from the elderly, and Rosenworcel noted that 26 state attorneys general had written in support.

On the regulatory side, the FCC did not create a new law; it interpreted the existing TCPA to cover AI. That limits its reach to phone calls—not deepfake audio spread over social media or video. The criminal acquittal also exposed how poorly existing election law fitted AI impersonation. The AP noted that many states had passed laws on deepfakes in political campaigns, even as House Republicans added a clause to their tax bill that would bar states and localities from regulating AI for a decade. Who should stop fake voices, and under which law, remained contested between Washington and the states.

Voice and video fakes aimed at companies are covered in the deepfake CFO scam; the wider story is on the cybersecurity timeline and the AI timeline.