Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks As Senate Republicans Block Vital AI Election Legislation

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to urge Senate support for the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the AI Transparency in Elections Act to provide necessary guardrails to protect our elections from the potential harms of AI. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

I want to thank Senator Klobuchar for her leadership on these bills, and for her committee’s bipartisan work to protect our elections from the potential harms of AI.

Both of these bills, the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the AI Transparency in Elections Act, have bipartisan support, so the Senate should support them, and pass them without delay.

We are less than one hundred days out from the first national elections ever held in the age of AI. We all know AI has many incredible benefits, but alongside those benefits come great risks. And the risks of AI for our elections could be severe: if we are not careful – if we fail to install proper guardrails – AI could jaundice, and even totally discredit, our entire election system as we know it.

Misinformation is already a serious problem in our elections, but AI makes it easier than ever to generate and spread it. It’s easier than ever to create deepfakes of candidates. AI already has been used in robo-calls to impersonate President Biden for the purposes of misleading voters during the primary. And once that misinformation is out, it’s hard – often impossible – to put the genie back in the bottle.

Well, we have a chance today to pass precisely the kinds of guardrails that would protect our elections from the risks of AI. We have a chance today to make sure that our democracy is not atrophied, harmed, or discredited because of these kinds of misleading ads.

These bipartisan bills would ban the use of materially-misleading AI-generated deep fakes that depict federal candidates, and require disclaimers any time political ads use AI in a substantial way. Most of Americans I think would overwhelmingly agree that these are reasonable guardrails and they’d give voters peace of mind that AI isn’t being used against them during election season without their knowledge.

These bills have broad support. Democrats support these bills. Republicans support these bills. Over forty current and former election officials and national security experts support these bills. Everyone recognizes the need to get something done.

We’re in a new world with AI. It can do a lot of good things, but it can cause some harms, and our job is to maximize the benefits but decrease the harms. One of the harms could be these deepfakes in elections, and we must do something about it.

A few months ago, I worked with the Senate’s Bipartisan AI Working Group – which I created a year ago with Senators Heinrich and Young and Rounds – to publish the first-ever Roadmap for AI Policy. Our Roadmap detailed a swath of proposals the Senate should consider to fortify our democracy in the age of AI.

I’m very glad to see that some of the good ideas we called for in our AI Policy Roadmap are reflected in these two bills.

So I again thanks, greatly thank, Senator Klobuchar for championing these bills and for coming to our AI forums and hearing what had to be said and then beginning to take action to make sure the abuses don't occur. I look forward to working further with Senator Klobuchar, the Rules Committee, and the other chairs and committees to regulate AI before it’s too late.

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