Chuck Schumer eyes opportunities to pass deepfake and AI bills as 2024 elections near
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he'll push to pass artificial intelligence and deepfake bills before the end of the year as the 2024 elections approach.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has spent the past year raising the alarm about the need for lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence.
Just last week, tech billionaire Elon Musk, a Donald Trump backer, shared a parody deepfake video to his nearly 200 million followers on X featuring audio of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she had never said.
Without guardrails for using artificial intelligence to depict political candidates, Schumer and others fear it could lead to a Wild West situation where deepfakes of Harris, Trump and others would proliferate in the media landscape — and undermine voters’ faith and trust in candidates, elections and American democracy.
“Look, deep fakes are a serious, serious threat to this democracy. If people can no longer believe that the person they’re hearing speak is actually the person, this democracy has suffered — it will suffer — in ways that we have never seen before. And if people just get turned off to democracy, Lord knows what will happen,” Schumer said in an interview Thursday on the balcony of his Capitol office.
With the window for legislative action quickly closing this calendar year and control of the chamber up for grabs, the powerful New York Democrat is eyeing must-pass bills as a vehicle to get something done on the fast-moving technology he’s labeled a threat to democracy and national security.
Rating: 5