Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate Bipartisan AI Insight Forum On Elections And Democracy Happening Today

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding today’s bipartisan AI Insight Forum on elections and democracy. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today, Senators from both sides of the aisle will take the next step in keeping our elections secure, this time from the powerful changes wrought by artificial intelligence, AI.

This morning, I will join with colleagues from both sides—and with experts from across the country—for our AI Insight Forum on elections and democracy. It’s one of the most important forums that we will hold this year, because of all the ways AI will reshape our lives, few are as immediate and stark as the impact it could have on elections.

This is the problem we now face: if left unchecked, AI has the potential to erode our democracy from within, and from abroad.

Political ads have already been released this year using AI-generated images and text-to-voice converters to depict certain candidates in a negative light.

Uncensored ChatBots can already be deployed at a massive scale to target millions of individual voters for political persuasion.

And unfortunately, once damaging misinformation is sent to a hundred million homes, it is hard—oftentimes impossible—to put the genie back in the bottle.

If we don’t enact the right guardrails soon, we could soon live in a world where political campaigns regularly deploy totally fabricated—yet totally believable—images and footages of Democratic or Republican candidates, distorting their statements and greatly harming their election chances.

Protecting our elections from AI’s risks isn’t just an issue for Democrats, nor just Republicans. Everyone—everyone—will be affected. And time is of the essence as Americans prepare to go to the polls in 2024. So I encourage all my colleagues to come to this AI Forum this morning.

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