The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold an informal hearing at 1:00pm EST on January 17, regarding the proposed amendment to its existing impersonation rule.

We first wrote about the proposed changes to the FTC rule in an article in February 2024. The current impersonation rule, which governs only government and business impersonation, first went into effect in April 2024, and is aimed at combatting impersonation fraud resulting in part from artificial intelligence- (AI) generated deepfakes. When announcing the rule, the FTC also stated that it was accepting public comments for a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at prohibiting impersonation of individuals. In essence, the rule makes the impersonation of a government entity or official or company unfair or deceptive.

The FTC announced the January hearing date in December 2024. The purpose of the hearing is to address amending the existing rule to include an individual impersonation ban and allow interested parties an opportunity to provide oral statements. There are nine parties participating in the hearing, including: the Abundance Institute, Andreesen Horowitz, the Consumer Technology Association, the Software & Information Industry Association, TechFreedom, TechNet, the Electronic Privacy Information Center; the Internet & Television Association, and Truth in Advertising.

While the original announcement of the proposed amendment indicated that the FTC would be accept public comments on the addition of both a prohibition of individual impersonation and a prohibition on providing scammers with the means and instrumentalities to execute these types of scams, the FTC has decided not to proceed with the proposed means and instrumentalities provision at this time. The sole purpose of the January 17 hearing is to “address issues relating to the proposed prohibition on impersonating individuals.” The public is invited to join the hearing live via webcast using this link.