https://apnews.com/article/fcc-political-robocalls-artificial-intelligence-ai-midterms-b97fb6e8d06704dc043556dba25de548WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission is considering a request by a conservative group to loosen rules on political robocalls, including those with artificial intelligence-generated voices, before November’s midterm elections.Federal law currently bans most robocalls to cellphones unless the caller gets consent beforehand. The petition calls for a waiver that would allow political groups to use artificial or prerecorded voices in unsolicited wireless calls.The Republican-led FCC advanced the request for public comment and could rule on it as soon as late October.Consumer advocacy groups warn the proposed change could trigger a surge of unwanted, partisan and potentially misleading automated calls in the critical final days of the election, which will determine which party controls Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.The potential perils became evident two years ago during the presidential primary season when thousands of voters in New Hampshire received a robocall with an AI-generated voice of then-President Joe Biden. The call suggested voters should forgo casting a ballot in the primary and “save” their votes for the general election.Under the waiver request before the FCC, some state and federal laws protecting against deception and voter intimidation would continue to prohibit certain misleading election-related messages. But granting it could weaken a major deterrent for bad actors, said Tim Harper, who leads the elections team at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology.Such a ruling close to Election Day would open “a huge opportunity for abuse during a period where harm has outsized impact,” he said. “Campaigns will use this technology to target voters in deceptive ways.”
A tool for better communication or misleading messages?The Club for Growth, a right-leaning economic policy group seeking the change, said it could help political organizations better communicate with potential voters, including in more languages, and improve polling accuracy by helping groups reach more voters. It calls current federal rules outdated and argues they dampen freedom of speech.The group emphasized that its request isn’t intended to promote robocalls. Still, if it passes, other political groups could use it to expand their use of autodialed calls that use artificial or prerecorded voices. “Our petition asks the FCC to treat First Amendment protected political speech the same way it already treats wireless calls about package deliveries, bank accounts, and doctor’s appointments,” said David McIntosh, the group’s president. “We think the Constitution protects a conversation with a voter at least as highly as a delivery update.”The nation’s communications regulatory body would have to act within a compressed schedule to grant the waiver in time to affect the midterm elections. Critics said it wouldn’t be the first time the FCC, which has become closely aligned with the president during his second term, has bypassed procedural norms to serve its political agenda.Its Republican chairman, Brendan Carr, launched an unusual early review of broadcast licenses for several ABC-owned local broadcast stations, prompting the company to sue. It said the review years ahead of schedule was unconstitutional, a violation of free speech and a retaliation for content Trump dislikes.The FCC didn’t respond to a request for comment on the petition.Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat among the FCC’s three active commissioners, told The Associated Press she opposes the move and thinks it would create “a tsunami of robocalls and misinformation.”
“We’ve already seen dark money groups use AI to put candidates’ likeness behind inflammatory comments ahead of this election,” Gomez said. “Exempting political calls from the need for consumer consent would supercharge that strategy, and misleading messages could land directly on the handheld phone of nearly every voter in our country.”Political robocalls have caused controversies beforeIn past elections, deceptive political robocalls have resulted in significant fines associated with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the federal law at the center of the petition.In 2020, tens of thousands of prospective voters in majority-Black areas of the U.S. received robocalls falsely warning that if they voted by mail, they could face arrest and debt collection.The two conservative hoaxers behind the calls, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, were criminally charged for the calls and fined some $5.1 million for violating the act.The political consultant behind the 2024 New Hampshire robocalls mimicking Biden’s voice said he did it to send a wake-up call about the potential dangers of AI. He was acquitted of criminal voter suppression charges but faced fines and civil damages associated with federal law.Shortly after the New Hampshire robocall caught authorities’ attention, the FCC ruled that robocalls made with AI voice-cloning tools were outlawed under the consumer protection act.The change could boost various types of AI callingIf the commission pivots to grant the Club for Growth’s petition, political groups of all stripes could amp up their use of AI to prerecord messages that play when voters pick up the phone. They also could use the technology to engage in live conversations with voters driven by AI large language models.
Mekela Panditharatne, senior counsel in the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, warned that such conversations hold risks. An AI system could make false promises about a candidate or manipulate voters in conversation by providing inaccurate or incomplete information.Harper, from the Center for Democracy and Technology, said there also could be a privacy risk for voters who might not know how an AI agent on the line with them is capturing or repurposing their data.
>>1542016>deregulation fucks the American consumerWhat else is new?
>>1542016>According to its website, the Club for Growth's policy goals include cutting income tax rates, repealing the estate tax, supporting limited government and a balanced budget amendment,These are the good guys. I'm OK with this.
I hope someone makes an AI Trump that just reads out his tweets and then demands money.
>>1542040AI Trump 2028!!!
>>1542016Well I’d rather Trump do it than some commie dumocrat
>>1542039Good guys don't need to flood your phone with AI slop Robo calls.
>>1542043>>1542043It's probably so Dems will take the bait and annoy the crap out of people though since they already do this all over the Internet.
>>1542053>Trump doing bad thing to bait Dems into doing thing they're supposedly already doingImpeccable MAGA logic.
>>1542055>Trump doingIt's not Trump you fucking retard. Holy shit.
>>1542055Reminder that for MAGA, every accusation is a confession. Like how trump tried to call the protestors at his rallies paid only for us to find out the people who attacked El Sayed were paid $200 to do it by Republicans.https://www.michigandaily.com/news/government/conservative-pac-paying-college-republicans-to-disrupt-abdul-el-sayeds-rallies-group-chat-messages-seem-to-show/
>>1542057>Former Democrats use Democrat tactics.We still don't appreciate Democrat bullshit around these here parts, partner.Take your shitty terrorist tactics and voter back.
>>1542060>The ESL aggressor once again pretending their victim to justify their inflicting suffering on the American peopleConservatism has and always been a blight to America.
>>1542061>Conservatism! He shouts as he's desperate to conserve things that need no conservation.Liggeralism.
>Still thinking his forced racism meme will work. Surrender accepted. Everyone will know trump will steal the election, since he's never won one legitimately.
>>1542039>Cuts taxes across the board>"We'll balance the budget bro"WHERE DO YOU RETARDS THINK THE MONEY COMES FROM
>>1542016keep it restricted to blue states and we guchi
>>1542084They won't.
republicunts always gotta fucking cheat
>>1542084>I'm openly wishing harm on my fellow countrymen.You are a fascist faggot and should be killed in the street as a casualty of the second American Civil war.>>1542081Have you not noticed? Literally all you have to do to get elected as a right wing retard is make grandiose promises you couldn't possibly keep, and fuck lgbtq people. Both thru public policy and grindr meetups where you cheat on your wife. If someone points out how you couldn't possibly keep your promise, just attack their character, they're already being the fun-suck, so the lemmings will turn on them and follow you off the cliff.
>>1542098What did it take for Kamala Harris to become the nominee? She didn't win any primaries. Nobody voted for her. Biden got rubber stamped and when he stepped down she automatically got the job
>>1542106>Harris didn't have a primary.Cool. So in what way does the corporate dem leadership offering up a candidate nobody selected to run even remotely the same as you mouth-breathing retards repeatedly electing bog monsters that wipe their ass with the campaign promises you're fucking stupid for believing and enrich themselves as much as possible?Are you trying to insinuate I'm an authoritarian because my candidate lost an election?Again that is an impressive feat of retardation, authoritarian politicians don't concede.What point are you failing to make with this whataboutism?
>>1542042my problem with the 'free market' is they deregulate the wealthy, while being increasingly restrictive to the working class.In a truly free market we'd be able to pool our funds to hire bounty hunters to assassinate CEOs of predatory companies. But the jackboots put their finger on the scales & bar us from obtaining true justice .In the old days someone who pulled this shit would turn up dead sooner or later.
>>1542112Well let's see.What campaign promise did Biden run on that he delivered?Did Biden cure cancer?Did Biden lower the price of housing?Did Biden forgive student loans?What campaign promise did the bog monster of the Biden family actually do?
>>1542117Do you really feel like Trump has room to talk over broken promises?
>>1542115I think you're misunderstanding what is going on in blue statesCalifornia is a political union between the mega rich and super poor. There's millions of rules that just make things more expensive, like banning gas stoves, or gas leaf blowers, internal combustion engine cars. You end up with regulations and taxes that poor people ignore and rich people can afford that squeeze the middle class.The government inspector will show up on a middle class property to point out one zoning infraction that costs thousands to fix while ignoring compounds of trailers with illegal Mexican migrants, dogs, and a dozen Healthcode violations
>>1542119No. It is the best and most holy land.And even if what you say is true, I still won't believe you, because I don't even care about anything but my team winning.You're like the other team's mascot simply farting in my general direction.
>>1542016This is fucked up. But where is Project 2025 mentioned?
>>1542081>WHERE DO YOU RETARDS THINK THE MONEY COMES FROMBillionaires right? Billionaires who produce things. Land owners people rent from.It certainly isn't ultimately the consumer paying billionaires so taxes can be levied on them so they can increase prices affecting their consumers.Where do you think the tax money goes ultimately anyway? Wouldn't that also be to billionaires mostly?
>>1542133True. Thus why the term "liggeral" was coined.Biggest fucking billionaire cock suckers ever. The funniest part is they don't even know it. So, it's like they fell for the old "close your eyes and open your mouth". trick.
>>1542016It’s 2026 now - stop worrying about “Project 2025”
>>1542098>You are a fascist faggot and should be killed in the street as a casualty of the second American Civil war.look at this leftist violent terrorist, lmao and leftsts have the nerve to complain about trump.
>>1542016my phone is flooded everyday with AI robocalls because i read the epstein files
>>1542145i'm pretty sure they are trying to kill me through heart failure :/
>>1542098>You are a fascist faggot and should be killed in the street as a casualty of the second American Civil war.>gay race communist neo-confederates making threats lol, lmao
>>1542117>Did biden cure cancer?You're going to say he didn't, because cancer still exists. The irony is he pushed for cancer research, and there's a type of cancer that was cured in his term. Meanwhile Trump has gutted basically all of our research. So if this is actually something you care about and aren't just being a pedantic little bitch, you just did a faceplant. I assume it's not and you don't care about anyone else because you're a narcissitic sociopath, that's why you have such a hard time admitting you're wrong, and part of why you should just be killedl.>Did Biden forgive student loansYes, lots of them. Many from predatory schools that were ripping people off. Some others from people with loans in specific circumstances where they had been paying for so long they were essentially just paying the interest.Funny enough, he tried to pass much more broad forgiveness, but it got struck down by supreme court justices that Trump installed.>What campaign promise did Biden actually do2/3 of the gotcha promises you're bringing up to make him look bad are things he actually did, you disingenuous dipshit. Meanwhile the guy you're trying to distract us from explicitly said he wouldn't start a war and explicitly started a war.Also, why is it okay for your guy to lie because someone else lied, you witless dipshit? How does that not reflect poorly on both of them, instead of somehow exonerating him because he's just as much of a piece of shit as what you're claiming biden was with 33% accuracy? And do you realize you have no credibility at this point?>>1542142Yeah, it's even remotely similar for an anonymous person on the internet to wish harm on you for wishing harm on them, as it is for the leader of your party of authoritarian faggots to wish an enemy of the country would annihilate millions of his countrymen.You stand behind that guy. You are an existential threat to me. Wanting to kill you isn't crazy, it's self-preservation.
>>1542156The President isn't actually going to let Iran bomb you, retard. He was making a joke.>Wanting to kill you isn't crazy, it's self-preservation.Inventing shit in your head as a pretense to kill people is actually crazy. Totally psychopathic, unhinged behavior.
>>1542156>democrats using whataboutism>excusing their own terrorism.ahh yes because the president will speak to you personally. gotta love the whataboutism you so love you disgusting filth of a human being.Your only real worth in life is to be a stepping stone and perish when iran bombs you.
>>1542158Do you think I'm actually going to track your IP and hide a bomb in your engine? You get your panties in just as much of a twist when I joke about killing you. Fuck you you pearl-clutching, goal-post moving faggot.
>>1542166>when I jokeJokes are completely defined by context, autismo. Trump was making a satirical comment at a political rally. You said anonymous strangers should literally die in a civil conflict because you were in an existential battle to defend your own life against Trump supporters. You are batshit crazy.
>>1542172You don't need to explain the concept of humor, projecto.That doesn't read as absurdist humor echoing retarded righty sentiment to you because you're a paranoid schizo, it's an obvious joke. You have no self-awareness, don't lecture me on context you hypocritical pearl-clutching, goalpost-moving faggot.
>>1542137Head of the FCC is one of the master minds of Project 2025, also he's been caught on camera saying he wants a national porn ban.
>>1542237good then we can finally start having the far-left LGBTQ+ rape you and your kids to death before they're quarantined into sanctuary cities.
>>1542237>saying he wants a national porn ban.Based.
>>1542039Weird that balancing the budget never involves slashing military spending, just shoe stringing every other government agency until it literally can’t function properly. Hey how’s that currently going with the FDA?
>>1542257Lol what's the US government biggest expense?
>>1542257Military is one of the smallest parts of our budget. We spend 123% more on healthcare and education than we do on defense.
>>15422812 trillion on healthcare. And it goes to billionaires.It's almost to v the point where getting a savings account for possible health issues is better than participating in u65 individual insurance.
>>1542284We could save trillions by nationalizing the system and cutting out the parasitic middle men.
>>1542301And create the NHS? I'll pass.The issue is the subsidies themsevles.The cost of medical technology and equipment has only inflated as the government has added money into it.That speaks to a level of waste, corruption or price gouging that is unacceptable.
>>1542301Oh and I forgot to mention, we should nationalize your mother.
>>1542302>>1542303>Corposhills want to keep wasting trillions on the rich parasitesClassic
>>1542305Why yes, Democrat politicians do want exactly that.That's why after the supreme court removed the ACA individual mandate, the bluest blue states made it state law.Bring it on fuckwit. Let's chat.
>>1542307you sound lonely
>>1542310No one tell hm the ACA was a republican plan and the alternative was open price gouging by health care.
>>1542311This again? You need new material.
>>1542312Oh no, the truth, how dare people stick to the facts that republicans want price gouging.
>>1542312NTA, but mandating healthcare enrollment at the same moment prices went up seems very GOP. In my case I lost healthcare when ACA rolled out as prices went too high then the company outright closed.Going private forced opt in my instead of single payer was a plot. This is also when health insurance goons bought drug companies and pharmacy chains too. Notice pharmacy chains are currently falling to pieces.
>>1542319Also trump just banned generic version of drugs from being imported, so now prices are going to skyrocket since people will either have to pay the price gouged cost of brand names drugs or die.
>>1542320Fuck, I forgot about that. What a complete piece of shit.
>>1542317Lol who voted for it? Who signed it? And when did the in parties switch again? You are a huge gay.
>>1542321>>1542331Not today news liars. Not today.
>>1542331Republicans did given they full support trump's war against Iran which is the main reason for costs exploding.
