Share and Follow
In Tampa, Florida, a new legislative initiative seeks to shield Americans from scams powered by artificial intelligence. Congressman Vern Buchanan, who serves as Vice Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, along with Congressman Darren Soto, has unveiled the AI Fraud Accountability Act.
This legislative move is mirrored in the Senate, where two senators have put forth similar proposals.
“As artificial intelligence advances, criminals are leveraging it to deceive unsuspecting Americans,” Buchanan explained. “There’s an alarming surge in AI-generated voice imitations and deepfake videos that intricately mimic family members, business leaders, government figures, and trusted organizations to commit fraud. It’s essential for Congress to proactively update federal laws to combat these new threats. The AI Fraud Accountability Act ensures that using AI for fraudulent purposes against Americans will lead to prosecution.”
Buchanan emphasized that this bipartisan effort across both houses of Congress aims to tackle the sophisticated AI-generated scams that target and exploit individuals with increasing precision.
According to Buchanan, the bipartisan bicameral legislation would crack down on highly realistic AI-generated impersonation scams designed to defraud Americans.
“As AI rapidly evolves, it is critical for us to ensure that the technology isn’t being misused to cause harm,” said Soto. “We’ve unfortunately seen cases where it is used to create realistic impersonations of real people. I’m proud to join this bipartisan legislation to set guardrails and prevent these deceptive practices from taking place.”
The AI Accountability Act would create a new offense under the Communications Act prohibiting individuals from falsely posing as real or imaginary people through digital impersonations with the intent to defraud someone of money or other things of value.
The Act would apply to AI-generated or technologically manipulated audio or visual depictions that are indistinguishable from an authentic depiction to a reasonable person, a press release from Vern Buchanan’s office said.
The legislation is supported by Microsoft, the National Consumers League, AARP, and numerous others.
“The threat of AI-generated scams and deepfake fraud call for urgent, bipartisan action. The AI Fraud Accountability Act provides legal tools to protect consumers and hold bad actors accountable. Thank you, Senators Sheehy and Blunt Rochester and Representatives Buchanan and Soto for leading this effort to combat fraud. We strongly support this legislation and look forward to continuing to work across Congress to help build a safer digital ecosystem for everyone,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft President
AI tools have made it easier to create highly realistic audio and visual impersonations of people.
The technology has many legitimate uses, but they also create new opportunities for bad actors to commit fraud and identity-based scams, a press release from Vern Buchanan’s office said.