“WHEN A.I. IS BEING USED YOU DESERVE TO KNOW”: FCC Chairwoman Speaks to Berkeley Law AI Institute l While R.E.A.C.H. Technology Committee Readies Comment and Standards

Busy week for A.I. aficionados.

First, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel was in Bear Territory last week, speaking at the Berkeley Law AI Institute.

Now readers don’t need to be reminded that the Czar himself is famously a Golden Bear (really more of a Golden Lion these days) and attended U.C. Berkeley during the glorious 90s. Huge Cal fan–and I fully expect them to pull off the upset against Miami this week.

Cal was recently ranked number 5 in the country–above Harvard, BTW–and the Berkeley Law AI institute is the greatest collective of legal minds addressing the legal impacts and ethical concerns round AI. (Fun!)

And since the FCC is the federal government agency that is in charge of AI (at least when it comes to generative/communicative AI) there is little surprise the Chairwoman travelled out West to visit with Berkeley AI Institute members.

Her remarks were nothing extraordinary. But she does summarize the legal developments around AI at the federal level quite well. So here you go:

The FCC kicked into high gear. We acted fast. We unanimously adopted a ruling that made clear that “artificial or prerecorded” robocalls using AI voice cloning technology violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. That’s a law from 1991. It limits telemarketing and the use of automatic dialing equipment. In 2021, the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of its protections against robocalls—I know it’s crazy—by limiting the definition of this equipment in Facebook v. Dugid. But we reached the conclusion that the law covers artificial voice cloning with the help of a group of State Attorneys General, including the New Hampshire Attorney General. They have been our partners-in-arms in the fight against robocalls. In fact, we have built a bipartisan army with 49 State Attorneys General who have signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding to work with the FCC on junk robocalls. The ruling we made bringing AI voice cloning technology under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is important because it gives our state colleagues the right to go after the bad actors behind these calls and seek damages under the law.

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We have to plan for this future now. That means we need to do it with the tools we have. It is not easy. But with all hard problems you have to start somewhere.

So we are starting with transparency. Last month, the FCC started a rulemaking to address the use of AI in robocalls and robotexts. We are taking public comment on it now.

We proposed an initial definition of an AI generated call as “a call that uses any technology or tool to generate an artificial or prerecorded voice or a text using computational technology or other machine learning, including predictive algorithms, and large language models, to process natural language and produce voice or text content to communicate with a called party over an outbound telephone call.”

Then we proposed requiring callers and texters to make clear when they are using AI generated technology. That means before any one of us gives our consent for calls from companies and campaigns they need to tell us if they are using this technology.

It also means that callers using AI-generated voices need to disclose that at the start of a call. This kind of transparency is important. And again, you have to start somewhere. By starting with disclosure we do not restrict speech, we do not restrict technology, we are instead seeking to create a norm—legally and socially—that when AI is being used you deserve to know.

Interesting, no? The FCC is fully aware that it is setting a “norm” for society– AI cannot be used without a disclosure. So sayeth the government in 2024.

Meanwhile, Response Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment (R.E.A.C.H.) has its own team of technological experts drawn from the most innovative AI companies in America developing its own set of standards. Unlike the FCC, R.E.A.C.H. is not looking for transformative societal change–it is looking for practical rules to help guide the fair and lawful deployment of incredibly powerful (and important) technology.

R.E.A.C.H. plans to have its standards and comments available to provide the FCC ahead of the close of the current NPRM–but it will be tight.

If you’re interested in assisting the effort there is still time, but not much.

While we are talking R.E.A.C.H. and FCC we are setting up a series of meetings with the Commission next week to: i) discuss the new V.2.0 standards; ii) close the loop on one-to-one consent; and iii) lay the groundwork for a world-changing petition to BAN carrier call blocking of legal and consented calls.

Will be very interesting.

And for those of you who have not yet reviewed our general standards (not our AI standards, that are still in the works), click here to obtain them:

Chat soon!