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FCC to declare AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal under existing law (arstechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

83 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the agency says. I'm pretty sure this puts us on the timeline where we eventually get incredible, futuristic tech, but computers and robots still sound mechanical and fake.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago (3 children)

OK. Enforce it then.

Block all calls unless you can verify exactly who they're from. Block all overseas VOIP bullshit. Block calls from any country that doesn't have the same call verification rules.

[–] droans 13 points 10 months ago

Blame the Republicans in Congress.

It took until last May for the Senate to finally confirm the fifth Commissioner. Per law, they can't create new rules or regulations when there's a vacancy.

Have you noticed that 5G was getting faster and had more coverage until it more or less stopped last year? For the first time in history, Congress did not renew the FCC's spectrum auction authority. T-Mobile bought a lot of 2.5Ghz spectrum back in 2022 but the FCC couldn't grant it to them. It wasn't until a month and a half ago that they could use it... Because Congress passed a bill that granted the authority for auctions held prior to March 2023.

They've also tried going after the VOIP services that don't follow STIR/SHAKEN or allow robocallers. But they don't have enough funding to do much more than the minimum. For the very few that they can catch, they first provide a warning period for the company to remove robocallers and correct their systems. If that fails, the FCC then permits carriers to block the provider, but they can't mandate it.

Except even that's not enough. The FCC can't take actual legal action against the providers, only the robocallers. So quite often, the provider will just change their business name, list different fake people as their executives, and then rejoin the networks as if nothing ever happened. Look up One Owl Telecom - they've done this numerous times.

[–] girthero 4 points 10 months ago

But its too hard to implement! Give us money! (telecoms probably)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Seems you could do all of that easily enough with asterisk or any of its variants/frontends. Bonus, you can tweak the rules as you like, on the fly.

For awhile I was getting obv scam calls from china - I neither know anyone there nor do business of any kind there. That country code would be one of the first on my blacklist.