Senate Rules Committee Advances Election-Related AI Bills

The Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday voted along party lines to pass two bills aimed at combating AI-driven manipulation of election content such as deep fakes and synthetic audio.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said committee passage was a good start and expressed interest in the full chamber approving legislation before the November election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Republicans opposed the bills. Overly broad terms in the legislation will result in censorship of legal political speech, they said.

In addition, Schumer and his bipartisan AI working group released their AI road map Wednesday (see 2405100028). He noted during Wednesday’s markup that the road map “embraces” action to protect elections that “mirrors the proposals before the committee.” However, Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., noted during a news conference with Schumer that the group didn’t specifically endorse any of the Senate Rules Committee’s bills.

Led by Senate Rules Committee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., all nine Democrats voted for the two bills: the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act (S-2770) and the AI Transparency in Elections Act (S-3875). A third bill, the Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act (S-3897), passed unanimously. S-2770, which Klobuchar wrote with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., would ban distribution of “materially deceptive AI-generated audio or visual media relating to candidates for federal office.” S-3875, which Klobuchar wrote with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act and require that advertisers disclose when an ad is “substantially” AI-generated. S-3897, which Klobuchar wrote with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would require the Election Assistance Commission to “develop voluntary guidelines for the administration of elections that address the use and risks of artificial intelligence technologies.”

Red and blue states are moving forward with laws banning manipulative AI content or requiring better transparency, and the federal government must catch up, Klobuchar said during the markup. States passing laws include Texas, Mississippi, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, California, Florida, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Mexico.

Ranking member Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and all Republicans present opposed the first two bills. Fischer said: AI can cause “serious harm,” but S-2770 and S-3875 “miss the mark.” The bills rely on “difficult-to-define” terms like “reasonable person” and “materially deceptive,” which create uncertainty about what speech should be regulated, Fischer said. Both bills will restrict unpaid political speech, for which government regulation has always been “limited,” she said.

McConnell said in a statement: If the committee “intends to impose new regulations on speech, we ought to be able to define specifically what we’re aiming for. Until Congress reaches a consensus understanding of what AI is acceptable and what is not, leading with our chin is not going to cut it in the domain of political speech.”

Schumer said during the markup that the three bills are a “very good start” to addressing AI-related election interference. “If deep fakes are everywhere and no one believes the results of the elections, woe is our democracy,” he said. “This is so damn serious.”

Schumer said during his news conference he plans to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., “in the very near future” to discuss moving forward with a bipartisan, bicameral effort on comprehensive AI proposals.

Fight for the Future criticized the working group’s road map in a statement Wednesday, saying it “reads like it was written by [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman and Big Tech lobbyists.” The document is heavy on “flowery” language about innovation and is “pathetic when it comes to substantive issues around discrimination, civil rights, and preventing AI-exacerbated harms,”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-N.D., a member of the working group, dismissed the criticism. The group hosted nine information seminars on the topic, which included perspectives from experts advocating for societal protections, Rounds told us: “The opportunities for AI advancement are significant. The rewards greatly outweigh the risks involved. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t risks, but they are manageable.”

Schumer and Democrats are pursuing “exactly the wrong approach,” Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters Tuesday: AI has the potential for “enormous productivity growth and job creation, and the Biden administration is responding to that with a very heavy-handed regulatory approach that will stifle innovation and has the potential to drive AI leadership abroad and cede AI leadership to China.”

Rounds said the U.S. must do its best to develop AI technology that embraces American, not Chinese values. AI developers should be confident the U.S. is the best place to headquarter their operations, he said.

“The Chinese aren’t waiting,” Young said during the news conference.

White House officials met with Chinese officials on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland, where the two sides discussed AI risks and safety, the White House announced Wednesday. Senior Director-Technology and National Security Tarun Chhabra and State Department acting Special Envoy-Critical and Emerging Technology Seth Center led the U.S. delegation. They met with Chinese officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology, National Development and Reform Commission, Cyberspace Administration of China, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Chinese Communist Party Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. The White House said the U.S. “underscored the importance of ensuring AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy in order to realize these benefits of AI, and of continuing to build global consensus on that basis” but also “raised concerns over the misuse of AI, including by” China. U.S. officials “affirmed the need to maintain open lines of communication on AI risk and safety as an important part of responsibly managing competition,” the White House said.