Anna Gomez, a Democratic member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has urged the agency not to allow political AI-generated robocalls after a petition was filed by the conservative pressure group Club for Growth.
The commissioner told Reuters that if “the FCC allows a dark money group to flood Americans’ phones with AI-generated robocalls they never agreed to receive, it would bring chaos so close to Election Day.”
Gomez added that “consumers reasonably expect the rules protecting them from unwanted robocalls to hold steady while they decide how to vote, not for the FCC to change them at the 11th hour to unleash a deluge of political AI slop on their phones.”
Club for Growth is a political organisation that backs candidates who adhere to its agenda of low taxation, limited government and other fiscally conservative policies. It plans to spend $175 million in the US midterm congressional elections, according to its website.
In a statement to Reuters, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said 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.”
It additionally argued that it is incorrect to refer to these calls as robocalls because a human initiates the dial to a phone before the AI agent handles the call.
The group filed a petition on 31 August requesting that the FCC allow it to make automated cell phone calls using AI-generated voices to people without their prior consent.
The FCC’s public consultation period began on 4 September with a deadline for comment on Monday. Responses to these comments are due 19 October. The FCC has not yet decided whether or not to approve the request.
On Monday, several public interest groups including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Consumer Federation of America, Common Cause and Public Citizen, signed a statement urging the FCC not to grant the petition.
“Using robocalls, a hated form of communication, to deliver political messages, a sensitive topic almost nobody wants to hear about from AI-generated strangers, will enrage a wide swath of the 98 per cent of the country that has a cell phone,” the statement said.
Robocalling is not a new practice in the US, but they are currently limited to landlines, and using AI-generated voices for the calls was banned by the FCC in 2024.
