Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
Combine two very unpopular scourges and what do you get? AI-generated political robocalls. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is considering a proposal from a conservative group to loosen the rules, and allow political robocalls with AI-generated voices, all before the midterms. Imagine hearing Barack Obama praising some Republican as very bipartisan and good to work with. Or hearing Donald Trump giving Republican voters permission to vote for some Democrat because the Democrat really likes him a lot. You may not have to imagine this if Carr steers through a rule change later this month.
Consumer groups are livid at the idea of a flood of automated calls pushing fake information in which the "speaker" sounds like some well-known person but is really an AI program. We got a dry run of this in 2024 when thousands of New Hampshire voters got a call from an AI-bot that sounded like Joe Biden and which urged them not to vote in the primary but rather to "save" their vote for the general election.
Fake robocalls are nothing new, but AI takes them to a new level. In 2020, tens of thousands of Black voters got robocalls telling them that if they voted by mail they could face arrest and debt collection. The perpetrators, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, were caught and fined $5 million. Catching the perps may not be so easy next time. (V)