National Consumer Law Center urges FCC to reject AI-voice political robocall petition

The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is urging the FCC to reject a petition from the advocacy group Club for Growth that would allow political robocalls, including those using AI-generated voices, to be placed to cell phones without prior consent. The FCC has opened the petition for public comment. The current Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requires autodialers to obtain prior consent, and violators may face private lawsuits or government enforcement. The petition proposes that AI-generated political calls be allowed as long as they do not exceed three times every 30 days and stop within 10 days of a stop request. The NCLC argues that this limit is effectively meaningless given the large number of political action committees, campaign teams, and nonprofits, and that allowing calls to continue for 10 days after a stop request would let political callers on all sides bombard voters right before an election. The NCLC also mentioned issues with AI chatbots such as hallucination and sycophancy, arguing that AI-generated conversations could distort facts and push people toward extremes.