AI-generated political robocalls could flood your phone if FCC green-lights petition

How much do you love the FCC under the current administration? When the agency’s not banning our favorite robot vacuums, or drones, or the routers we need to get online, it’s thinking about spam calls. Normally, we’d expect that to mean taking steps to reduce the number of unwanted calls interrupting our days. But now with a major election looming in the US, the FCC is apparently considering a move in the opposite direction.

Wait, it gets even better: We’re not just talking about loosening the rules on making political robocalls without express recipient consent. The FCC is also weighing the possibility of allowing these calls to be AI-generated. An Associated Press report outlines the efforts by the conservative “Club for Growth” organization to petition the FCC to grant an expedited exemption to allow it to make “political calls that utilize artificial intelligence.”

The group claims that granting its petition would “allow for the beneficial use of AI in a way that is consistent with the goals of the Commission and the Administration” and… yeah — we bet.

But what about the people who have to receive those calls? Besides simply bothering everyone with unwanted messages, the FCC itself has warned that AI robocalls “contain an enhanced risk of fraud and other scams.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez echoes this concern, arguing that granting the request would inundate phone owners with “a tsunami of robocalls and misinformation.”

Gomez warns about the potential for groups to use any such permission to spread “inflammatory comments ahead of this election,” adding, “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.”

The FCC is accepting public comment on the petition through October 19. We’d suggest you share your thoughts, if we thought it would actually matter at all.