FCC Democrat Sounds Alarm Over Push to Legalize AI Robocalls Ahead of Midterms

A Democratic member of the United States Federal Communications Commission is warning that a conservative advocacy group's request to permit artificial intelligence-generated political robocalls could unleash a wave of misinformation just as voters head to the polls for the midterm elections in early November.

Commissioner Anna Gomez pressed her case on Wednesday, arguing that the agency should reject a petition from Club for Growth, a national conservative fiscal policy organization, that would open the door to automated political calls powered by AI, according to Reuters and the Associated Press.

The petition, submitted on August 31, asks the FCC to let political groups place automated phone calls to Americans without first obtaining their permission. Club for Growth has proposed limiting the volume of calls so that any individual would receive no more than three over a 30-day window, and would be given the chance to opt out of future contact.

The FCC opened a public comment period on the proposal on September 4, with the deadline for submissions falling on Monday. Replies to those comments are not due until October 19, and the commission has not yet indicated whether it will grant the request.

Gomez did not mince words about the stakes. She told Reuters that if the FCC permits a "dark money group" to inundate Americans' phones with AI-generated robocalls they never consented to receive, it would bring "chaos so close to Election Day." In separate remarks to the Associated Press, she said scrapping the agency's consent requirement could produce a surge in unwanted calls and a corresponding rise in false or misleading information.

The commissioner's office did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera.

Robocalls have been a fixture of political campaigning for years, but the regulatory landscape is uneven. The FCC bars such calls to cellphones and pagers unless the recipient has given prior express consent, while calls to landlines remain permissible. The emergence of AI has sharpened the concerns, because synthetic voices can convincingly mimic real people and make impersonation far easier.

Citing a growing wave of scams built on the technology, the FCC moved in February 2024 to outlaw AI-generated voices in robocalls, declaring at the time that the action "now makes the act of using AI to generate the voice in these robocalls itself illegal."

The dangers are not hypothetical. Ahead of New Hampshire's 2024 primary, voters received an automated call featuring an AI-generated clone of President Joe Biden's voice urging them not to cast a ballot. The FCC identified political consultant Steve Kramer, who was working for long-shot primary challenger Dean Phillips, as the person responsible and said he could face up to $6 million in fines. Kramer was later acquitted of voter suppression charges.

States have moved to fill the gap. Louisiana, Tennessee and Vermont enacted laws this year requiring disclosures when campaign phone calls are generated by AI. Since 2019, 25 states have passed legislation addressing the use of AI-generated material in elections, reflecting broad unease about how the technology could distort political communication.

The robocall dispute is unfolding against a wider backdrop of anxiety about AI's role in the coming elections. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 57 percent of registered voters believe the administration of President Donald Trump has not taken the risks posed by AI seriously enough, while 54 percent said the same of congressional leadership.

Late last month, the White House brought together executives from leading AI companies, among them Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google, to sign a voluntary agreement pledging stronger safeguards around the development of their most advanced systems. The non-binding nature of the pact has done little to quiet critics.

Tom Wheeler, a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, questioned whether such commitments carry real weight. He noted that the arrangement allows AI companies to design their own controls, choose their own evaluators and decide for themselves whether their procedures are being followed. Wheeler added that the historical record offers little reassurance, pointing out that Facebook, Google and Twitter have all retreated from or violated self-imposed standards in the past.

For Gomez, the convergence of these trends makes the pending petition particularly perilous. Allowing AI-driven political calls to reach voters without consent, she argues, would combine the reach of automated dialing with the persuasive power of synthetic voices at the very moment citizens are forming their final judgments about candidates and issues.

The FCC now faces a decision that will likely shape how political campaigns use AI-powered outreach for years to come. With the comment period closed and replies due in mid-October, the commission's ruling could arrive just weeks before voters go to the polls, leaving little time for either campaigns or regulators to adjust if the outcome sparks confusion or abuse.