FCC Posts AI NPRM and Other Drafts for Aug. 7 Meeting

The FCC on Tuesday released a draft NPRM that considers consumer protections against AI-generated robocalls and two other items scheduled for a vote at the commissioners' Aug. 7 open meeting (see 2407160064). In addition, it released drafts of an order creating an emergency alert system code for missing and endangered persons and an NPRM on procedural updates to the robocall database.

The AI draft proposes defining an AI-generated call as one using "any technology or tool to artificially generate a voice or text using computational technology or other machine learning, including predictive algorithms, and large language models, to process natural language and produce voice or text content to communicate with a called party over an outbound telephone call.” It proposes requiring that callers make clear they plan to use AI-generated calls as part of obtaining prior consent from consumers for calls. Callers would clarify that a message uses AI at the beginning of each call.

The draft would exempt from Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules artificial or prerecorded calls made by those with a speech or hearing disability. They could use “any technology, including AI technologies, designed to facilitate" their ability "to communicate over the telephone.” The AI draft proposes to seek comment “on the privacy implications of real-time content-based call detection, alerting, and blocking technologies,” and whether privacy safeguards are needed.

Curbing robocalls is an area where the FCC has clear legal authority to oversee AI, Commissioner Brendan Carr said Wednesday during a Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council webinar (see 2407170056). However, Carr noted his concerns about some aspects of the administration’s regulation of AI. We must find “the middle bowl of porridge,” he said, and “some commonsense guardrails.”

Some of the administration’s work on AI has been overly regulatory and reminiscent of EU-style rules, Carr added.

Regulating AI is a chance for the FCC to reverse the “hard reality that over the last 20 years” the agency has become “year after year after year, a not very important agency,” former FCC Chair Reed Hundt said during the MMTC webinar. “The fundamental fact about AI is that all the information that these data centers have comes over a communications platform and all the application[s] that AI permits … go over a communications platform.”

Former interim FCC Chair Michael Copps said the agency must “really step forward in a visionary way” on Al. “There’s not a lot of guidance from the Founding Fathers on artificial intelligence.”

In November, commissioners approved 5-0 an open-ended notice of inquiry asking how AI can fight robocalls and about the technology's potential risks (see 2311150042).

Meanwhile, the FCC’s Missing and Endangered Persons alert code order would create an MEP emergency alert system code and permit MEP wireless emergency alerts, according to a draft version released Wednesday. The code would be used for “missing and endangered individuals over the age of 17 and missing and endangered individuals under the age of 17 whose circumstances fall outside of the criteria for issuance of an AMBER Alert,” the draft item said. The code would “facilitate the more efficient and widespread dissemination of alerts and coordinated responses to incidents" involving "all missing and endangered persons -- including Indigenous persons -- across multiple jurisdictions,” the draft order said.

EAS participants and manufacturers would have 12 months after the rule takes effect to implement the code. WEA MEP alerts would use the Imminent Threat and Public Safety Message classification, which commenters said would make the new code easier to implement. The item received broad support and no opposition at the NPRM stage (see 2405240043).

A draft NPRM proposes additional steps to update the robocall mitigation database. The commission would seek comment on whether to require providers update information submitted to the commission registration system (CORES) within 10 business days of any changes, require multifactor authentication each time a provider accesses the database and require that providers obtain a unique personal identification number before the database accepts a submission, according to a fact sheet.

If adopted, the item would establish a base forfeiture of $10,000 for each false or inaccurate submission. The item would also seek comment on implementing a filing fee for robocall mitigation database submissions. "Protecting Americans from illegal robocalls remains the Commission’s top consumer protection priority," the robocall mitigation draft says. It adds that the proposed changes will "increase accountability of non-compliant providers."