By DAN MERICA and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Releasing an audio recording of a special counsel’s interview with President Joe Biden could spur deepfakes and disinformation that trick Americans, the Justice Department said, conceding the U.S. government could not stop the misuse of artificial intelligence ahead of this year’s election.

A senior Justice Department official raised the concerns in a court filing on Friday that sought to justify keeping the recording under wraps. The Biden administration is seeking to convince a judge to prevent the release of the recording of the president’s interview, which focused on his handling of classified documents.

The admission highlights the impact the AI-manipulated disinformation could have on voting and the limits of the federal government’s ability to combat it.

A conservative group that’s suing to force the release of the recording called the argument a “red herring.”

Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation accused the Justice Department of trying to protect Biden from potential embarrassment. A transcript of the interview showed the president struggling to recall certain dates and confusing details but showing a deep recall of information at other times.

“They don’t want to release this audio at all,” said Howell, executive director of the group’s oversight project. “They are doing the kitchen sink approach and they are absolutely freaked out they don’t have any good legal argument to stand on.”

The Justice Department declined to comment Monday beyond its filing.

Biden asserted executive privilege last month to prevent the release of the recording of his two-day interview in October with special counsel Robert Hur. The Justice Department has argued witnesses might be less likely to cooperate if they know their interviews might become public. It has also said that Republican efforts to force the audio’s release could make it harder to protect sensitive law enforcement files.

Republican lawmakers are expected to press Attorney General Merrick Garland at a hearing on Tuesday about the department’s efforts to withhold the recording. According to prepared remarks, Garland will tell lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that he will “not be intimidated” by Republican efforts to hold him in contempt for blocking their access to the recording.

Sen. Mark Warner, the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press that he was concerned that the audio might be manipulated by bad actors using AI. Nevertheless, the senator said, it should be made public.

“You’ve got to release the audio,” Warner said, though it would need some “watermarking components, so that if it was altered” journalists and others “could cry foul.”

In a lengthy report, Hur concluded no criminal charges were warranted in his handling of classified documents. His report described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It noted that Biden could not recall such milestones as when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.

Biden’s aides have long been defensive about the president’s age, a trait that has drawn relentless attacks from Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, and other Republicans. Trump is 77.

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The Justice Department’s concerns about deepfakes came in a court papers filed in response to legal action brought under the Freedom of Information Act by a coalition of media outlets and other groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

An attorney for the media coalition, which includes The Associated Press, said Monday that the public has the right to hear the recording and weigh whether the special counsel “accurately described” Biden’s interview.

“The government stands the Freedom of Information Act on its head by telling the Court that the public can’t be trusted with that information,” the attorney, Chuck Tobin, wrote in an email.

Bradley Weinsheimer, an associate deputy attorney general for the Justice Department, acknowledged “malicious actors” could easily utilize unrelated audio recordings of Hur and Biden to create a fake version of the interview.

However, he argued, releasing the actual audio would make it harder for the public to distinguish deepfakes from the real one.

“If the audio recording is released, the public would know the audio recording is available and malicious actors could create an audio deepfake in which a fake voice of President Biden can be programed to say anything that the creator of the deepfake wishes,” Weinsheimer wrote.

Experts in identifying AI-manipulated content said the Justice Department had legitimate concerns in seeking to limit AI’s dangers, but its arguments could have far-reaching consequences.

“If we were to go with this strategy, then it is going to be hard to release any type of content out there, even if it is original,” said Alon Yamin, co-founder of Copyleaks, an AI-content detection service that primarily focuses on text and code.

Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he has never seen the government raise concerns about AI in litigation over access to government records. He said he suspected such arguments could become more common.

“Knowing how the Department of Justice works, this brief has to get reviewed by several levels of attorneys,” Sus said. “The fact that they put this in a brief signifies that the Department stands behind it as a legal argument, so we can anticipate that we will see the same argument in future cases.”

The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By SEUNG MIN KIM, COLLEEN LONG and ELLIOT SPAGAT (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as the White House tries to neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of the November elections.

The White House detailed the long-anticipated presidential proclamation signed by Biden, which would bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. The Democratic president has contemplated unilateral action for months, especially after the collapse of a bipartisan border security deal in Congress that most Republican lawmakers rejected at the behest of Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

The order will go into effect when the number of border encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500 per day, according to senior administration officials. That means Biden’s order should go into effect immediately, because that figure is higher than the daily averages now. The restrictions would be in effect until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500 per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. Those figures were first reported by The Associated Press on Monday.

Once this order is in effect, migrants who arrive at the border but do not express fear of returning to their home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants would face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S., as well as potential criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, anyone who expresses that fear or intention to seek asylum will be screened by a U.S. asylum officer but at a higher standard than what is currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited forms of humanitarian protection, including the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Biden’s order was detailed by four senior administration officials who insisted on anonymity to describe the effort to reporters. The directive is coming when the number of migrants encountered at the border have been on a consistent decline since December, but senior administration officials nonetheless justified the order by arguing that the numbers are still too high and that the figures could spike in better weather, when the encounter numbers traditionally increase.

Yet many questions and complications remain about how Biden’s new directive would be implemented.

For instance, the Biden administration already has an agreement with Mexico in which Mexico agrees to accept up to 30,000 citizens a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela once they are denied entry from the U.S., and senior administration officials say that will continue under this order. But it is unclear what happens to nationals of other countries who are denied under Biden’s directive.

Senior officials also acknowledged that the administration’s goal of deporting migrants quickly is complicated by insufficient funding from Congress to do so. The administration also faces certain legal constraints when it comes to detaining migrant families, although the administration said it would continue to abide by those obligations.

The legal authority being invoked by Biden comes under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if it’s deemed “detrimental” to the national interest. Senior officials expressed confidence that they would be able to implement Biden’s order, despite threats from prominent legal groups to sue the administration over the directive.

The senior administration officials insisted that Biden’s proposal differs dramatically from that of Trump, who leaned on the same provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Biden is using, including his 2017 directive to bar citizens of Muslim-majority nations and his efforts in 2018 to clamp down on asylum.

For instance, Biden’s order outlines several groups of migrants who would be exempted due to humanitarian reasons, including victims of human trafficking, unaccompanied minors and those with severe medical emergencies.

The directive would also exempt migrants who arrive in what senior officials called an orderly fashion, which includes people who make appointments with border officials at ports of entry using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app. About 1,450 appointments are made a day using the app, which launched last year.

Average daily arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico were last below 2,500 in January 2021, the month that Biden took office. The last time the border encounters dipped to 1,500 a day was in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Congressional Republicans, who almost all rejected the Senate’s bipartisan border proposal earlier this year, dismissed Biden’s order as nothing more than a “political stunt” meant to show toughened immigration enforcement ahead of the election.

“He tried to convince us all for all this time that there was no way he could possibly fix the mess,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference. “Remember that he engineered it.”

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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.