The FCC issues a press release last week advising that FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel had sent letters to nine telecommunications companies seeking answers about the steps they are taking to prevent future fraudulent robocalls that use artificial intelligence for political purposes.

The Commission continues to be deeply concerned with the use of AI-generated voice cloning following the recent Biden deepfake in New Hampshire (and perhaps on stage at the debate? ha.)

“This is just the beginning. We know that AI technologies will make it cheap and easy to flood our networks with deepfakes used to mislead and betray trust. It is especially chilling to see AI voice cloning used to impersonate candidates during elections. As AI tools become more accessible to bad actors and scammers, we need to do everything we can to keep this junk off our networks,” wrote Rosenworcel.

While it is clear the Commission wants to crack down on AI deepfakes it also seems pretty clear to me they don’t have a plan of their own. Asking the carriers what they’re doing about it feels buck-passy to me. I wonder when a public notice will be issued about a potential rulemaking on this issue.

More broadly, this letter is just the latest in a pressure campaign by the FCC to the carriers to limit traffic without any clear directives. While we all agree scams need to be prevented the endless “you-figure-it-out” directives to the carriers from the Commission has lead to huge streams of lawful traffic being blocked while the bad guys keep slipping through. Tale as old as time.