The FCC has proposed a $6 million effective for the scammer who used voice-cloning tech to impersonate President Biden in a series of illegal robocalls during a Recent Hampshire primary election. It’s more about robocalls than AI, however the agency is clearly positioning this as a warning to other would-be high-tech scammers.
As it’s possible you’ll recall, in January, many citizens in Recent Hampshire received a call purporting to be a message from the president telling them to not vote within the upcoming primary. This was, in fact, fake — a voice clone of President Biden using tech that has change into widely available during the last couple years.
While making a fake voice has been possible for a very long time, generative AI platforms have made it trivial: Dozens of services offer cloned voices with few restrictions or oversight. You may make your personal Biden voice pretty easily with a minute or two of his speeches, which naturally are easily found online.
What you’ll be able to’t do, the FCC and a number of other law enforcement agencies have made clear, is use that fake Biden to suppress voters, via robocalls that were already illegal.
“We’ll act swiftly and decisively to make sure that bad actors cannot use U.S. telecommunications networks to facilitate the misuse of generative AI technology to interfere with elections, defraud consumers, or compromise sensitive data,” said chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, Loyaan Egal, in a press release.
“Political consultant” Steve Kramer was the first perpetrator, though he enlisted the assistance of the shady Life Corporation (previously charged with illegal robocalls) and the calling services of shady telecom Lingo, AKA Americatel, AKA BullsEyeComm, AKA Clear Selection Communications, AKA Excel Telecommunications, AKA Impact Telecom, AKA Matrix Business Technologies, AKA Startec Global Communications, AKA Trinsic Communications, AKA VarTec Telecom.
Kramer is “apparently” in violation of several rules — but as yet there aren’t any criminal proceedings against him or his collaborators. This can be a limitation of the FCC’s power: They need to work with local or federal law enforcement to place weight behind their determinations of liability as an authority agency.
The $6 million effective is more like a ceiling or aspiration; as with the FTC and others, the actual amount paid is usually far less for various reasons, besides, it’s a big sum. The subsequent step is for Kramer to reply to the allegations, though separate actions are being taken against Lingo, or whatever they call themselves now that they’ve been caught again, which can lead to fines or lost licenses.
AI-generated voices were officially declared illegal to make use of in robocalls in February, after the case above prompted the query of whether or not they counted as “artificial” — and the FCC decided, quite sensibly, that they do.
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