The Senate Rules Committee passed three bills today aimed at protecting the nation’s upcoming Federal elections from artificial intelligence’s possible negative impact – including through deepfakes of candidates.
The bills will now head to the full Senate for further consideration.
The committee passed one bill – Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act – with full bipartisan support. The remaining two bills – Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and AI Transparency in Elections Act – saw pushback from Republicans on the panel.
With the Democrats’ slight majority, all three bills were passed and sent to the Senate floor for further consideration. Senate Rules Committee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced all three bills on a bipartisan basis.
Sen. Klobuchar introduced the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act in September alongside Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Chris Coons, D-Del., and Susan Collins, R-Maine. The bill aims to identify and ban deepfakes depicting Federal candidates in political ads.
The bill would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit the distribution of “materially deceptive AI-generated audio, images, or video relating to Federal candidates in political ads or certain issue ads to influence a Federal election or fundraise.”
However, consistent with the First Amendment, the bill has exceptions for parody, satire, and the use of AI-generated content in news broadcasts.
“Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, we cannot have our democracy undermined by ads and by videos and by robocalls when you literally don’t know if it’s the candidate you love or the candidate you dislike,” Sen. Klobuchar said ahead of the markup today. “We cannot have that happen to our democracy.”
She noted that her bill would only apply to the Federal level and not affect the “at least 14 states [that] have now enacted some form of labeling so that at least the viewers of these videos know if they’re real or not.”
Senate Rules Committee Ranking Member Deb Fischer, R-Neb., called on her colleagues to reject both the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and AI Transparency in Elections Act because they are over-inclusive, increase burdens on speech, and seek to preempt state law.
“The issues surrounding AI and elections are complicated. We have to balance the potential for innovation with the potential for deceptive or fraudulent use,” Sen. Fischer said. “On top of that, we can’t lose sight of the important protections our constitution provides for free speech in this country. These two bills do not strike that careful balance.”
The AI Transparency in Elections Act would require disclaimers on political ads with images, audio, or video that are substantially generated by AI. The legislation requires political ads created or altered by AI to have a disclaimer, except when AI is used for only minor alterations, such as color editing, cropping, resizing, and other immaterial uses.
Sen. Klobuchar introduced this bill in March with support from Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Both bills passed through the committee on a vote of 9-2. Six Republicans were not present at the time of the vote.
The Preparing Election Administrators for AI Act passed with unanimous consent on a vote of 11-0. Sens. Klobuchar and Collins worked together again to introduce this bill in March, which would require the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), in consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to develop voluntary guidelines for election offices.
These guidelines will address the use and risks of AI in election administration, cybersecurity, information sharing about elections, and the spread of election-related disinformation.
An amendment was also agreed to during today’s markup that would direct the EAC to issue a report on the use of AI for the 2024 election cycle.
“In a short time, generative artificial intelligence has changed our world in dramatic ways, and it’s permanently changed our understanding of what it takes to protect our elections,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during the markup today. “As we all know, Americans go to the polls in a few months. It’s fair to say the 2024 elections will be the first national elections held in the age of AI.”
He added, “It’s going to take bipartisan cooperation if we have any hope to get legislation enacted into law. The three bills taken up by the Rules Committee represent a very good start.”
Today’s committee passage of the three AI bills aimed at protecting elections comes hours after the Senate AI Working Group – led by Sen. Schumer – released its roadmap for AI policy.
The 31-page document highlights eight AI policy priorities for Senate committees to consider in the 118th Congress “and beyond,” including encouraging effective watermarking as it relates to AI-generated election content. However, today’s roadmap fails to endorse any one piece of AI election legislation in particular.
