My friends, happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tech Drop, a weekly list of the hottest stories at the intersection of politics and technology.
Bots and Biden
New Hampshire’s attorney general has linked two Texas-based companies to dubious robocalls in which a voice sounding like President Joe Biden’s discouraged Democrats from participating in New Hampshire’s presidential primary. Attorney General John Formella said Tuesday that a criminal investigation is underway and that the calls possibly represent the first known attempt to use artificial intelligence to interfere with an election in the U.S.
Read more at The Associated Press.
Stopping spies
The Biden administration has announced a new policy that will allow the State Department to ban people from entering the U.S. if they’ve been found to use commercial spyware to crack down on dissent. The policy says a visa can be restricted if someone has used such tools to surveil or harass journalists, activists, dissidents and members of marginalized communities, among others.
Read the State Department’s announcement here.
Trumped-up claims
Check out this thread from Walter M. Kimbrough, a former president of Dillard University, on the use of AI-generated misinformation to try to persuade Black people to vote for Trump:
This wouldn’t be the first time that AI has been used to portray Trump or his movement as friendly to Black voters. And it won’t be the last.
Read more at X.
Meta’s misinformation problem
Meta’s Oversight Board said it agreed with the social media giant’s decision to allow a doctored video of Biden, designed to make him look like he inappropriately touched one of his granddaughters, to remain on Facebook.
Facebook and the Oversight Board, which Meta pays to review the company’s conduct, claim that although the video was edited, it doesn’t violate Meta’s guidelines because Biden’s speech wasn’t altered. But the board also criticized Meta’s policies around manipulated media for being…
Read the full article here
