The United States must do more to combat the power of artificial intelligence, President Joe Biden declared in a particularly strident State of the Union address Thursday evening. In setting out his policy priorities, Biden also advocated for stronger privacy laws and penalties for drug traffickers.
“I’ve signed more than 400 bipartisan bills, but there’s still a lot more to do,” Biden said during a joint session of Congress. “Strengthen the penalties for fentanyl trafficking. Pass a bipartisan privacy law to protect our children online. Fulfill the promise of AI and protect us from its threat. Ban AI voice impersonation — And more.
Biden’s voice was spoofed in an AI-generated deepfake robocall that targeted New Hampshire voters in January.
The company behind the deepfake, Lingo Telecom, was issued a cease and desist order by the US Federal Communications Commission. The FCC later banned the use of AI in robocalls as the 2024 election season heats up.
The FCC said at the time that “these types of calls have increased over the past few years as the technology now has the potential to confuse consumers with false information by mimicking the voices of celebrities, political candidates and close family members.” “
The Biden administration is working to stop AI-generated deepfakes. Last year, the White House brought together leading generative AI developers—including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Anthropic, Hugging Face, IBM, Stability AI, Amazon, Meta, and Inflection—to commit to responsible AI development.
In February, the Biden administration said it would use watermarking and encryption to fight political disinformation. Later this month, Biden announced the launch of the AI Safety Institute Consortium, which includes participants such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, and NVIDIA.
Biden, however, is not alone in criticizing AI. Biden’s rival in the 2024 US presidential election, Donald Trump, has also spoken out against AI, calling it “very scary” in an interview with Fox Business.
Even Pope Francis has come out against creative AI after the Pope, Biden and Trump were all victims of AI-generated deepfake photos.
“We now need to be aware of the rapid changes taking place and manage them in ways that protect basic human rights and respect these institutions and laws,” the pope said in a January homily. which promote human development,” the pope said in a January homily. “Artificial intelligence should serve our best human abilities and our highest aspirations, not compete with them.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.