By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Monday urged the Federal Communications Commission not to approve a petition to allow political AI-generated robocalls from conservative political group Club for Growth ahead of the November congressional elections.
"Under this change, campaigns could use their opponents’ voice to send out a message that is, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, a blatant lie," Schumer said.
The comment period expires on Monday.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat who has opposed the petition, said Monday on CNN the FCC could act in the coming days and just two weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
A spokesperson for the FCC said the agency is not planning to grant the petition. "There is no one at the FCC that has expressed any interest in moving to an order on this or any of the petitions and there are zero plans to so," the spokesperson said.
"There is absolutely no excuse to relax these standards and allow special interests to flood our cellphone lines with deepfakes or dark-money-funded AI voices," Schumer said.
The group, which is spending millions of dollars ahead of the November US congressional elections, earlier asked the FCC to allow it to make political calls to cell phones "using an artificial or prerecorded voice - including an AI-generated voice - without obtaining prior express consent."
Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement earlier this month that the group wants "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."
The group, which backs conservative economic views on taxes, regulations and cutting the size of government, plans to spend $175 million in the midterm congressional elections, it said on its website.
The FCC, in describing the petition, said the system "uses a perfunctory human being for the sole purpose of clicking on a ‘send’ or similarly termed button to transmit thousands of text messages per hour."
A number of public interest groups have urged the FCC not to grant the petition.
Schumer noted that in 2024, the FCC proposed fining a political consultant $6 million over fake robocalls that mimicked then President Joe Biden's voice, urging New Hampshire voters not to vote in that state's Democratic primary.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Chizu Nomiyama)
