Issue One responds after election-related AI bills fail to pass in the Senate

This afternoon, the Senate failed to advance two bills from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) relating to elections and generative artificial intelligence (S.3875, S.2770). These bills would have required political campaigns to disclose their use of generative AI in campaign ads and banned the use of deceptive AI in campaign ads. Issue One Director of Election Protection Carah Ong Whaley issued the following statement:

“Today, the Senate failed to act and protect Americans from the risks that generative AI poses to our elections. Generative AI tools can be used to create synthetic audio, images, and video for the purpose of deceiving voters.

“Over the past year, we’ve already seen foreign adversaries — particularly Russia, China, and Iran — rely on this technology to disrupt democratic elections across the world, and U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that we need to be prepared to address this threat for November.

“AI has also been used to target election workers and to automate the harassment of election workers, posing a significant threat to our election infrastructure. Given the decentralized nature of U.S. elections, the burden of addressing this unprecedented issue falls on state and local officials. These bills would have provided strong federal protections for these local experts and strengthened our elections.

“Issue One commends Sen. Klobuchar for her leadership on this issue, and encourages the Senate to revisit these bipartisan proposals quickly to ensure that we are prepared for this November and future election cycles.”

Background:

A bipartisan coalition of over 50 members from Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media, National Council on Election Integrity, and Faces of Democracy Campaign had previously endorsed these two bills in a letter sent to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.