The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has highlighted its efforts to protect consumers from potential harms related to artificial intelligence in a comment submitted as part of the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) notice of inquiry examining the implications of emerging AI technologies.
The FCC initiated this notice of inquiry in November 2023 to explore measures addressing the impact of AI, particularly in protecting consumers from unwanted and illegal telephone calls and text messages under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
In its comment, the FTC detailed its initiatives to utilize all available tools to address the rapid emergence of new AI-powered technologies and their potential risks. As part of its law enforcement activities, the FTC has taken action against companies that deceive users about their use of AI or employ AI in unfair ways. For instance, the FTC alleged that Amazon and Ring used highly private data—voice recordings collected by Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and videos collected by Ring’s internet-connected home security cameras—to train their algorithms while violating customers’ privacy. The comment also addressed the agency’s rule outlawing government and business impersonation scams—a type of fraud that generative AI can exacerbate.
FTC staff also discussed efforts to combat AI-enabled voice cloning. Scammers are using voice cloning technology to impersonate family members, friends, business executives, or others to obtain money from consumers. To address this growing problem, the FTC launched its Voice Cloning Challenge last year to promote ideas for protecting consumers from misuse of AI-enabled voice cloning for fraud and other harms.
In April, four winning submissions were announced: AI Detect, which uses algorithms to differentiate between genuine and synthetic voice patterns; DeFake, which proposes adding carefully crafted perturbations to voice samples to hinder cloning; OriginStory, which suggests using off-the-shelf sensors to authenticate human-originated voice recordings at creation; and Voice Cloning Detection, which advocates for liveness detection technology to identify voice clones and audio deepfakes in real time.
The Commission voted 5-0 to authorize FTC staff to file the comment.
The Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition and protect and educate consumers. The FTC will never demand money, make threats, instruct you to transfer money or promise you a prize. More information on consumer topics is available at consumer.ftc.gov. Fraud reports can be made at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Follow the FTC on social media for updates on consumer alerts and business news.
---
