On Tuesday, New Hampshire Legal professional Common John Formella mentioned {that a} Texas-based telecom firm was behind the reportedly AI-generated robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden that went out forward of the state’s presidential major final month.

At a press convention on Tuesday, Formella introduced that he had recognized Life Company and its proprietor, Walter Monk, because the supply behind the hundreds of calls, and introduced that his workplace issued a cease-and-desist letter to the corporate and had opened a legal investigation into the matter. The Federal Communications Fee despatched its personal cease-and-desist letters to Life Company, in addition to one other Texas firm, Lingo Telecom, the alleged voice service supplier of the calls.

“Making certain public confidence within the electoral course of is significant,” Formella mentioned on the Tuesday press convention. “We’re offering this replace and data immediately to guarantee the general public that we take this severely and that that is considered one of our most vital priorities. We’re additionally offering this replace and data to ship a powerful message of deterrence to any particular person or entity who would try to undermine our elections by AI or different means.”

Formella mentioned that anyplace from 5,000 to 25,000 of those robocalls have been positioned forward of the New Hampshire major to mimicked Biden and discourage voters from voting. “Your vote makes a distinction in November, not this Tuesday,” the robocall mentioned.

In January, WIRED reported that two groups of researchers had decided that the decision was created with voice-cloning software program from the AI startup Eleven Labs. The corporate declined to take accountability for the Biden clone, telling WIRED that it was “devoted to stopping the misuse of audio AI instruments.”

Final week, the FCC put out a brand new proposal to ban robocalls that used AI-generated voices by updating the Phone Shopper Safety Act, or TCPA, a 1991 regulation that regulates telemarketers. The FCC has used the TCPA prior to now to go after junk callers, together with conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman. In 2021, the FCC fined the pair greater than $5 million for violating the regulation after they positioned calls threatening to launch the non-public info of voters in the event that they voted by mail within the 2020 election.

“Shoppers should know that the particular person on the opposite finish of the road is precisely who they declare to be,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel mentioned in a press release on Tuesday.