They say a magician never reveals his tricks, but Paul Carpenter is ready to reveal this one: the New Orleans-based illusionist says a Democratic consultant affiliated with the Dean Phillips presidential campaign paid him to make a digitally manipulated recording of Joe Biden.
The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, New Hampshire Democrats received a robocall that used a digitally faked recording of the president to urge them to “save” their votes and not write Biden’s name on their ballots. Biden ultimately won the Democratic primary through a write-in campaign.
Carpenter told NBC News in a story published Friday that he was hired by Steve Kramer to make multiple imitations of politicians’ voices, including the one of Biden, using AI software. Kramer has worked on ballot access for Phillips, the Minnesota representative running a longshot Democratic presidential campaign against Biden.
“I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said of the Biden deepfake. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”
“It’s so scary that it’s this easy to do,” Carpenter said. “People aren’t ready for it.”
Carpenter, whose political views appear to span the spectrum from pro-conspiracy theory to anti-Donald Trump, says he and Kramer met through a mutual acquaintance. He provided NBC with texts, emails, and Venmo payment receipts detailing their relationship.
Kramer first hired Carpenter in September to make two AI recordings of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In January, Kramer asked Carpenter for the fake recording of Biden. Carpenter told NBC he had never heard of Phillips. Instead, he believed Kramer was working for Graham and Biden, and that their campaigns had authorized the voice projects.
Kramer’s father Bruce paid Carpenter $150 via the electronic payment platform Venmo for the Biden deepfake. It is not clear why Kramer had his father send the payment.
Carpenter says Kramer directed him to delete all of their email correspondence after the news of the Biden robocall broke. Those emails included instructions for creating the AI recording and the script Carpenter followed.
Phillips’s campaign denied knowledge of or involvement in the deepfake robocall plot. The campaign told NBC that Kramer had completed his contract to help Phillips get on the ballot in certain states several weeks ago and was no longer in communication with him. The campaign also said it would consider taking legal action against Kramer if the allegations are true.
However, Phillips has been linked to weird AI before. A pro-Phillips PAC created an AI version of the candidate that The New Republic’s Tim Noah found much more engaging than Phillips himself.
This isn’t the first time Kramer has been associated with political scandal. He helped Kanye West get ballot access during his highly controversial presidential campaign in 2020.
The following year, Kramer’s client Sara Tirschwell sued him. Tirschwell had been running as a Republican for New York City mayor, but she was kicked off the ballot in April 2021 after she failed to get enough signatures to qualify. Tirschwell accused Kramer of sabotaging her campaign by gathering signatures that mostly ended up being invalid. Kramer has denied the accusations, and the case is currently ongoing.
