Enlarge image
US President Biden's AI-generated voice was intended to influence voters in New Hampshire
Photo: Evan Vucci / AP
After the shock surrounding a campaign call with an artificially generated voice from President Joe Biden, the US government wants to put a stop to such robocalls. The telecommunications authority FCC emphasized in a statement that the prior consent of the recipient is essential for calls with voices generated by artificial intelligence. The originators of such calls would also have to clearly identify themselves.
The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) finding strengthens the legal framework for combating counterfeits using artificial intelligence. Ultimately, it ruled that the same rules apply to automated AI calls as previously apply to communication with artificial or recorded voices.
A few weeks ago, automated calls with a deceptively real-sounding imitation of President Joe Biden's voice caused alarm in the USA. The demand of the calls was not to participate in the Democratic Party primary in the state of New Hampshire. The incident fueled concerns that in the coming months there could be attempts to influence the outcome of the November presidential election by spreading deceptively real AI fakes.
Such robocalls are a common election campaign tool in the USA, but in this case they are illegal. The sender information on the calls was spoofed to appear to come from a political committee of Biden's Democratic Party, the New Hampshire attorney general's office said at the time. Authorities have now identified a Texas company as the originator of the calls and are taking action against them.
Artificial intelligence-based software can be trained to say arbitrary sentences using voices of specific people using sound recordings. Robocalls are an attractive target for such manipulations because they are difficult to monitor, said American political expert Ian Bremmer on the US broadcaster CNBC after the current incident. He warned that it is also relatively easy online to spread false information to many people with the help of an “army of bots”.
czl/dpa