Transcripts For CSPAN2 Fmr. 20240703

Years. Good afternoon, everyone, im honored to call this hearing to order. Im pleased to be here with my colleague senator fisher wearing her pin with ruby red slippers symbolizing theres no place like home. This place in washington is on our minds. Thank you, senator merkley for being here and we have other members attending as well and i want to thank Ranking Member fisher and her staff for working with us on this hearing on Artificial Intelligence in the future of our elections. I want to introduce i will introduce our witnesses shortly but we are joined by minnesota secretary of state steve, vast experience in running elections and well respected in our state and nationally, trevor potter, former fbc commissioner and chair. Thank you for being here. Maya wiler, we are going to hear Ranking Member fisher will be introducing two remaining witnesses. We thank you for being here neil and ari cohn, Free Speech Council at tech freedom. Like any emerging technology, ai comes with significant risk and our laws need to keep up. Some of the risks are already clear starting with security which includes protecting our critical infrastructure, guarding against cyberattacks, staying ahead of foreign adversaries. We must also protect our innovation economy including the people who produce content and countering the alarming rise in criminals using ai to scam people. Confronting these issues is a mayor bipartisan focused where two weeks ago we convened the first in a series forums organized by leader schumer and senators round and young and senator heinrich to discuss this sandwich with experts of all backgrounds, industry union, nonprofit across the spectrum in their views. Today were here to focus, hone in on a particular risk of ai. Thats a risk that it poses for our elections and how we address them. Given the stakes for our democracy, we cannot afford to wait. So the hope is we can move on some of this by yearend with some of the legislation which already has bipartisan support to be able to get it done with some larger legislation. As i noted we are already seeing this technology being used to generate viral misleading content, content to spread disinformation and to see voters. There was an ai generated video, for instance, posted on twitter of one of my colleagues, senator warren, in which a fake senator warren said that people from the opposing party shouldnt be able to vote. She never said that but it looked like her. The video was seen by nearly 200,000 users in a week and ai generated content has already began to appear in political ads. There was one ai generated image of former President Trump hugging dr. Fauci that was actually a fake. The problem for voters is that people arent going to be able to distinguish if its the opposing candidate or their own candidate, if its them talking or not. That is untenable in a democracy. Can create voice recordings that sound like President Biden or other elected officials from any party and this means computer can put words in the mouth of a leader. That would pose a problem during emergency situation like a Natural Disaster and in the hard to imagine it being used to confuse people. We also must remember that the risks posed by ai are not just about candidate. Its also about people being able to vote. In the judiciary hearing i actually just simply asked chat gpt to write me a tweet about a polling location in bloomington, minnesota, i noted that sometimes they were lines at the location, what should voters do and just quickly spit out go to 124 elm street. Theres no such location in bloomington, minnesota. So you have the problem of that to more likely to occur as we get closer to an election. With ai the rampant disinformation will quickly grow in quantity and quality. We need guardrails to protect our election so what do we do and i hope that will be some of the subject in addition to admiring the problem that with can discuss today. On a bill that we are leading together to get at deep fake videos like the ones i just talked about used against former President Trump, used against Elizabeth Warren, those are ads that arent really the people, senator collins, senator coons, we just bruised it and it creates a framework that is constitutionally all right based on past and recent precedent with exceptions for things like parody and satire that allows those to be bent. Another key of transparency when it comes to this technology is disclaimers for other types of ads, that is another bill congresswoman clark is leading in the house which would require disclaimer on ads that include ai generated images so at least voters know that ai is being used in the campaign ads and finally i see commissioner dickerson out there. Finally, are you happy about that mr. Cohn . There you go. Finally it is important that the federal Elections Commission be doing their part in taking on these threats while the fbc is now accepting Public Comments on whether it can regulate the deceptive ai generated campaign ads after deadlocking on the issue earlier this summer. We must remain focus on taking action in time for the next election. So whether you grow or not agree that the fbc currently has the power to do that, theres nothing wrong with spelling it out if that is the barrier. We are working with republicans on that issue as well. So i kind of look at it three prong, the most agreenous that must be banned with the constitutional limitations, the disclaimers and then giving the fec powers that they need including state laws one which we will hear from steve simon. With bipartisan cooperation put in place we will get the guardrails that we need. We can harness the potential of ai, the great opportunities while controlling the threats we now see emerging and safeguard our democracy from those who would use this technology to spread disinformation and upend our elections whether it is abaud, whether it is domestic. I believe strongly in the power of elections. I also believe in innovation and we have got to be able to draw that line to allow voters to vote and make god decisions or at least putting guardrails in place. I will turn it over to senator fisher. Thank you, chairman klobuchar, congress often examines issues that affect americans on a daily basis. Artificial intelligence has become one of those issues. Ai isnt new but significant increases in Computing Power have revolutionized its capabilities. Its quickly moved from the stuff of Science Fiction to being part of daily lives. There is no question that ai is transformative and poised to evolve rapidly. This makes understanding ai all the more important. In consideration whether legislation is necessary congress should waive the benefits and the risks of ai, we should look at how innovative uses of ai could improve the lives of our constituents and also the dangers that ai should pose, we should consider possible economic advantages and pitfalls, we should thoughtfully examine existing laws and regulations and how they might apply to ai. Lately ai has been a hot topic in washington. I know many colleagues and committees in both chambers are exploring this issue. The rules committee jurisdictions includes federal laws governing elections and Campaign Finance and were here to talk about how ai impacts campaign, politics and elections. The issues surrounding the use of ai in campaigns and elections are complicated. On one hand there are concerns of use of ai to create deceptive or fraudulent campaign ads. On the other hand, ai can allow campaigns to more efficiently and effectively reach voters. Ai driven technology can also be used to check images, video and authenticity. As we learn more about this technology, we must also keep in mind the important protections our constitution provides for free speech in this country. Those protections are vital to preserving our democracy. For a long time we didnt have many reasons to consider the sources of speed or if it mattered whether ai was helping to craft it. Our First Amendment prohibits the government from policing protected speech, so we must carefully scrutinize any policy proposals that would restrict that speech. As Congress Examines this issue we need to strike a careful balance between protecting the public, protecting innovation and protecting speech. Again, i am grateful that we have the opportunity to discuss these issues today and to hear from our expert witnesses. Thank you. Thank you very much, senator fisher. Im going to introduce our witnesses. Our first witness is minnesota secretary of state steve simon, secretary simon has served as minnesotas chief elections administrator since 2015. He previously served in the minnesota house of representatives and was an assistant attorney general. He earned his law degree from the university of minnesota and bachelors degree from taft. He appeared before this Committee Last in march of 2021 and didnt screw up so we invited him back again. Mr. Potter also served as general counsel to my friend and former colleague senator john mccain, 20002008 president ial campaign and taught Campaign Finance at the university of virginia and at oxford. He earned law degree of university of virginia, masters from harvard. Third witness is maya wiley, civil and human rights. Ms. Wiley is also a professor of public and urban policy at the new school. Previously she served as couple to the mayor of new york city and founder and president of the center for social inclusion. She earned her law degree from Colombia Law School and bachelors degree from dartmouth. With that, i will have senator fisher introduce our remaining witnesses. We have with us also neil who serves as Senior Research center at the center of growth and opportunity, nonpartisan think tank at Utah State University that focuses on technology and innovation. Mr. Chelson previously served at the federal trade commission and ari cohn, nonprofit devote today Technology Law and the preservation of civil liberties. Mr. Cohn is a nationally recognized expert in First Amendment law and defamation law and coauthored to state and federal courts on vital First Amendment issues. Welcome to all of you. Very good. I do. Thank you, you can be seated. [inaudible] members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity. Im steve simon, i have the privilege of serving as minnesota secretary of state, im grateful for your willingness to engaging in important topic and honored to be here. Artificial intelligence is not a threat to american democracy in and of itself but it is an emerging and powerful amplifier of existing threats. All of us who touched the election process must be watchful and proactive especially as the 2024 president ial contest approaches. A year ago, we werent talking so much about generative ai. The release of the newly accessible tools such as chat gpt challenged all of that and in the hands of those who want to mislead ai is a new and improved tool. Instead of stilted communications with poor grammar, generative ai can provide apparent, precision and clarity. The potential threat to the administration of elections is real. Were talking about an old problem namely disinformation that can easily be amplified. One possible danger could come from an innocent circumstance, ai software simply might fail to grasp the nuances by our state by state election system. Prominent Computer Scientist in minnesota named max made article several months ago. He asked chat gpt questions about law as senator klobuchar said she did and the program gave wrong answers to several questions. Now was that intentional misdirects, probably not. In the wrong hands ai could be used to misdirect intentionally and in ways that are far more advanced than ever. I remember seeing a paper leaflet from an election about 20 or more years ago distributed in a particular neighborhood that told residents that in the coming election voting would occur on tuesday for those whose last names begin with the letters a through l while everyone else would vote on wednesday. Now that was a paper leaflet from a couple or more decades ago. Now imagine a convincing seeming email or deep fake conveying that kind of disinformation in 2024, the perpetrators could be domestic or foreign. In fact, the department of Homeland Security has warned recently that our foreign adversaries may use ai to sharpen their attacks on our democracy. One last point on potential consequences, the Brennan Center recently identified a socalled liars dividend from the vair use of ai simply put the mere existence of ai can lead to undeserved suspicion and video that contradicts preconceived ideas may be dismissed as a deep fake. The bottom line is that misdirection in elections can cause disruption, so if ai misdirects it can become an instrument of that disruption. So what can be done about it . Well, in our office we are trying to be proactive. First we are leading with the truth. That means pushing out reliable and Accurate Information while also standing up to miss and disinformation quickly. Second, we have been working with local and federal partners to monitor and respond to inaccuracies and third we emphasized Media Literacy, the National Association of secretaries of state has helped with trusted Sources Initiative urging americans to seek out sources of election information from secretaries of state and local election administrators. Fourth, our cyber defenses are strong. Weve invested time and resources in guarding against intrusions that could introduce misleading information to voters. As for possible legislation, i do believe that a federal approach would be helpful. The impact of ai will be felt at a National Level so i applaud bipartisan efforts such as to protect elections from deceptive ai act and the real political ads act. Recently the Minnesota Legislature enacted similar situation with broad bipartisan support. There is a Critical Role for the private sector too. Companies have a responsibility to the public to make sure their ai products are secure and trust worthy, i support the efforts already underway to encourage adherence to basic standards. But let me end on a note of some cautious optimism, ai is definitely a challenge. Its a big challenge. But in some ways we have confronted similar challenges before with each technological leap, we have generally been able to manage the potential disruptions to the way we receive and respond to information, the move to computerization, the arrival of the internet, the social media all threaten pathways. In short order the American People got smart about those things and they adapted and congress helped. Ai may be qualityively different from those other advances but if we get better at identifying false information and if we continue to rely on trusted sources for election information and if congress can help, we can overcome many of the threats that ai poses while harnessing benefits. Thank you for inviting me to testify today, i look forward to continued partnership. Thank you very much, mr. Potter. Good afternoon, thank you for the honor appearing before you today to testify about Artificial Intelligence and elections. My testimony will focus on how Political Communications generate through ai relate to conduct of campaigns and why federal regulation is urgency needed to address the impact of some aspects of this technology on our democracy. To summarize the overarching concern ai tools can be used to design and spread fraudulent or Deceptive Communications that infringe on voters fundamental right to make informed decisions at the ballot box. Every election cycle billions of dollars are spent to create and distribute Political Communications. Before voters cast their ballots they must parse through the many messages and decide what to believe. Our Campaign Laws are intended to protect and assist voters by requiring transparency about who is paying to influence their election choices and who is speaking to them, however, ai could make voters task much more difficult because of its unprecedented ability to easily create realistic false content unchecked the deceptive use of ai could make it virtually impossible to determine who is truly speaking in a political communication, whether the message being communicated is authentic or even whether something being depicted actually happened. This could leave voters unable to meaningfully evaluate candidates and candidates unable to convey their desired message to voters undermining our democracy. It opens the door to malign even foreign actors to manipulate our elections with false information. Foreign adversaries may not favor specific candidates, they may just seek to create chaos and so distrust in our elections, thereby harming both parties and the whole country. I believe there are 3 concurrent paths to proactively addressing these risks. 3 paths flagged by the chair in her opening remarks. First, congress could strengthen the fecs power to protect elections against fraud. Under current existing law, the fec can stop federal candidates and their campaigns from fraudulently misrepresenting themselves as speaking for a another candidate or party on a matter which is damaging to that candidate or party. I believe the fec should explicitly clarify through the rulemaking process that the use of ai is included in this prohibition. Then congress should expand this provision to prohibit any person, not just a candidate from fraudulently misrepresenting themselves as speaking for a candidate. Second, congress should pass a new law specifically prohibiting the use of ai to engage in electoral fraud or manipulation. This would help protect voters from the most pernicious uses of ai. While any regulation of Campaign Speech raises First Amendment concerns that must be addressed, let me also say this, the government has a clear compelling interest in protecting the integrity of the electoral process. In addition, voters have a well recognized First Amendment right to meaningfully participate in elections including being able to assess the political messages they see and know who the actual speaker is. Theres no countervailing First Amendment right to intentionally defraud voters in elections. So a narrow law prohibiting the use of ai to deceptively undermine our elections through fake speech would rest on firm constitutional footing. Thirdly and finally, congress should also expand requirements to ensure voters know when electoral content has been materially altered or falsified by ai. This would at least show skepticism. They are not exclusive or exhaustive. Congress could decide to use a combination of tools while a single solution is unlikely to remain for long. Congress should consider how each policy can be most effectively enforced with hauling with gridlock and slow fec enforcement process, new criminal penalties enforceable by the Justice Department and private right of action allowing candidates targeted by deceptive ai to seek rapid relief in federal court. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, mr. Potter. The rules committee as senator fisher knows is the only committee on which both senator schumer and senator mcconnell serve. This makes our jobs very important. So we are pleased that senator schumer is here and working to give him the opportunity to say a few words. Thank you, senator klobuchar and whatever committee you chair would always be important. Same with senator fisher. I would like to congratulate you mr. Potter, you made it as a witness without being from minnesota. [laughter] anyway, thank you and i want to thank you my colleagues for being here. Ai Artificial Intelligence is reshaping life on earth in dramatic ways. Its informing how we fight did i feel and manage our lives, enrich our minds and peace and very much more. We cannot ignore ai dangers, bias, new weapons and today im pleased to talk to you about a more immediate problem, how ai could be used to jaundice even totally discredit our elections as early as next year. Make no mistake, the risks of ai on our elections is not just an issue for democrats nor just republicans, every one of us would be impacted. No voter will be spared. No election will be unaffected. It will spread to all corners of democracy and thus it demands a response from all of us. Thats why i firmly believe that any effort by congress to address ai must be bipartisan and i can think of few issues that should unite both parties faster than safeguarding our democracy. We dont need to look very hard to see how ai can warp democratic and we have seen deep fakes and misinformation reach voters, political ads have been released this year right now using ai generated images and text to voice converters to depict certain candidates in a negative light. Uncensored chat box can be deployed as massive scale to target voters for political persuasion and once damaging information is sent to a hundred million homes, its hard oftentimes impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. Everyone has experienced the exd what then is to stop foreign adversaries from taking advantage of this technology to interfere with our elections. This is is the problem we now face. If left unchecked they can erode from within and from abroad and the damage unfortunately could be irreversible. As americans prepare to go to the polls in 2024 we have to move quickly to establish safeguards to protect voters from ai related misinformation and it went bo easy for congress to legislate in ai its to engage in most complex subject this body has ever faced. Im proud of the rules committee and the leadership on this issue. And thank you, chairman, chairwoman klobuchar for your continuing work on legislative efforts to protect our elections from the potential harms on ai. And thank you again for organizing this hearing holding this hearing on ai and our elections is essential for drawing attention to the need for action and i commend you and Ranking Member fisher for doing just that. In the mean time, i will continue working with senator rounds, heinrich and young to host ai insight forums that focus on ai and democracy to supplement the rules committee and other committees and i look forward to working with both senator klobuchar and fisher and all of the rules committee members, thank you for being here. Senator welch, merkley and britt to develop Bipartisan Legislation that maximizes ais benefits, minimizes the risks. Finally, the responsibility for protecting our elections wont be congress alone. The administration should continue leveraging the tools we have already provided and private companies should their part. Itll take all of us, the administration, the private sector, Congress Working together to protect our democracy ensure robust transparency and safeguards and ultimate i will keep the vision of our founders alive in the 21st century. So thank you again to the members of this committee, thank you to chairwoman klobuchar and fisher and i look forward to working with you on expensive ai legislation and learning from your ongoing work. Thank you. Thank you very much, senator schumer and i will note it was this committee with you and senator mcconnells support that was able to pass the electoral count act with near unanimous support and got it over the finish line on the floor and so we hope to do the same with some of these proposals and thank you for your leadership and youre willingness to work across the aisle to take on this important issue. With that, ms. Riley, youre up next. Thanks. Good afternoon chairwoman klobuchar, Ranking Member fisher, my own senator, our majority leader schumer. Brooklyn to be specific. [laughter] and all the members of this esteemed committee. Its a great honor to be before you. I do just want to correct the record because im no longer in the faculty of the new School Although i have joined the district of Colombia School of law as justice professor. Im going to be brief because so much of what has been said i agree with. But really to elevate 3 primary points that i think are critical to remember and i hope we will discuss more deeply today and in the future. One is that we know disinformation, misinformation is not new and it predates Artificial Intelligence and thats exactly why we should deepen our concern and why we need Government Action because as has been said, we have witnessed this, even in the last two election cycles, Artificial Intelligence is already expanding the opportunity and the depth of not only disinformation in the sense of elevating falsehoods about where people vote, whether they can vote, how to vote, that goes directly to the ability of voters to select candidates of their choice and exercise their franchise lawfully and we have seen that a disproportionately targets communities of color. Even the Senate Intelligence committee noted that when it was looking at russian interference in the 2016 election that the Africanamerican Community was really disproportionately targeted by that disinformation. But the tools of Artificial Intelligence we are seeing in the generative Artificial Intelligence, the deep fakes already being utilized by some Political Action committees and Political Parties and that is something that already tells us that its already in our election cycle and that we must Pay Attention to whether or not people have clear information about what is and is not accurate, what a candidate did or did not say in addition to the other things that weve talked about. But i also want to talk about the conditions in which we have to consider this version about generative Artificial Intelligence and our election. We only have a democracy if we have trust in the integrity of our election systems and a big part of the narrative we have been seeing driving disinformation in the last two cycles has been the narrative that our elections, in fact, are not trust worthy. This is something we are continuing to see increase. We have also watched as social media forms have turned back from policies, have gutted staffing to ensure that their public squares essentially that they maintain are Public Companies are adhering to their user agreement and policies in ways that ensure that everyone online is safe from hatred, safe from harassment, but also is clear what is and is not factual information. I say that because we cannot rely on social Media Companies to do that on their own. We have been spending much of our time over the past few years focused on trying to get social Media Companies both to improve their policies as well as to ensure that they are policing them fairly equally and with regard to communities that are particularly targeted from misinformation. I can tell you what youve seen in many news reports, in many instances we have seen gutting of the staffing that has produced the ability to do some of that oversight and even when they have that staffing it was inadequate. So we as a civil rights community, as a coalition of 240 National Organizations are very, very, very much in favor obviously of the bipartisan processes that were able to participate in but also to say unless we start to recognize both how people are targeted, who is targeted and its increase in violence in our election cycles, not this is not just the radical, its practical, t documented and we are seeing an increase, fbi data shows it that we are at risk but that we can take action both in regulating Artificial Intelligence and ensuring the public knows what is artificially produced and also ensuring that we have oversight of what social Media Companies are doing and whether they are complying with their own policies and ensuring that theyre helping to keep us safe. Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, gentleman klobuchar, Ranking Member fisher, thank you for inviting me to discuss influence of Artificial Intelligence on elections. Imagine a world where our most valuable resource intelligence is abundant to a degree we have never seen, a world where education art and scientific innovations are super charged by tools that augment our cognitive abilities where high fidelity political speech can be created by voices that lack deep pockets where realtime factchecking and andinexpensive are the norm. Thats a promise of ais future and it seems plausible to me but if you take one message from my comments it should be this, Artificial Intelligence and political speech is not emerging and it is here and it has been for years. Ai technologies are entangled in modern content creation. This isnt just about futuristic tech or deep fakes, its about the foundation ole technologies that we use to craft our political discourse today. Follow political ad from inception to distribution. Today an ad Campaign Director doesnt just brainstorm ideas over coffee, she taps tools like chat gpt. When her media team gathers assets automatic computer vision, tagging make it a swift through sit through vast image databases. Her photographers capture image. Ai powered facial and ai detention that subjects remain in focus. Apples newly announced apple 15 takes this to the next level. Its dedicated photography with those, no exaggeration to say that every photo taken on iphone 15 will be generated by ai. Speech recognition tools make it easy to do video edits. Sophisticated software, blemishes disappear and backgrounds are beautified because of ai. And tools like haeygen make it possible to adapt audio and video of final ad into an entirely different language seamlessly. These are just some of the tools that ai tools that are involved in creating content now. Some are new but many others have been here for years and in use. Ai is so intracall woven. I suspect each senator here has used ai content in ad campaigns knowingly or not. Here is why this matters, because ai is so pervasive and ad creation requiring ai content disclosures could affect all campaign ads, check the box disclosures wont aide transparency, they will only clutter everyones political messages. To adjust what unique problems, ai will facilitate more political speech but theres no reason to think that it will shift the ratio of truth to deception. Historically malicious actors dont use cuttingedge tech. Cheap fakes, selective editing overseas content farms and plainold photo shop are inexpensive and effective enough. Distribution not content generation is a bottleneck for misinformation campaigns. Money and time spent creating content is money and time that they cant spend spreading it. The committee should continue to investigate what new problems ai raises. It could review ais effects on past elections and should obviously closely monitor its use and effects on the coming election cycles. More broadly, congress should establish a permanent central hub of Technical Expertise on ai to advice the many federal agencies dealing with ai related issues. Remember, ai is here now already affecting and improving how we communicate, persuade and engage. Legislative approaches can burden political speech today and prevent the promise of a better informed more engaged in political dialogue tomorrow. Thank you for your attention. Im eager to address any questions that you have. Thank you, mr. Chilson, mr. Cohn. Thank you for inviting know testify today. Its truly an honor. Preservation of democratic processes is paramount and the word processes i think highlights a measure of agreement between all of us here. False speech that misleads people on the electoral process, the mechanics of voting, where to vote, how to register to vote, those statements are particularly damaging and i think that the government interest in preventing those specific process harms is where the governments interest is most compelling but fundamental selfgovernance is free and unfettered discourse especially in political affairs. First amendment protection core political speech and has application to speech utter during campaign for Political Office and even false speech is protected by the First Amendment. The determination of truth and falsity in politics is properly the domain of the voters and to avoid unjustiffed intrusion any restriction on political speech must satisfy scrutiny which requires us to ask a few questions. First, is the restriction actually necessary to serve government interest. We are not standing here today on the praecipes of calamity. Ai presents incremental change in the way that we communicate much of it for the better and correspondence. Theres simply no everyday that ai poses a unique threat to our political discussion and despite reckless warnings deep fakes played little to no role in the 2020 election and the technology has become better in intervening years, theres no indication that deep fakes pose serious misleading voters and changing their actual voting behavior. In fact, one study of the effect of political deep fakes found that they are not uniquely credible or more emotionally manipulative related to nonmanipulated media. Even or not labeled ai generated media has been used recently has been promptly identified and subject to immense scrutiny even ridiculed. The second question is whether the law is narrowly tailored. It would be difficult to draft narrowly tailored in specifically at ai such a law would be inherently inclusive failing to regulate deceptive media that does not utilize ai. Media that has long demonstrable history of use as well as fears of ai. A law prohibiting ai generated political speech would sweep enormous amount of protected and even valuable political discourse under. Ai generated media can serve candidates position or highlight two candidates beliefs. In fact, the ultimate jest of a message conveyed through technical falsity may turn out to be true. To prohibit such expression particularly in the political context, steps beyond what the First Amendment allows. Even more obviously prohibiting use of politically ai generated media broadly by any one or any place any time no matter how intimate the audience or low risk of harm clearly is not tailored to protect any harms that the government claim it has the right to prevent. Third question is whether this was alternative. When regulating speech on the basis of content the government must choose least restrictive means. Digital literacy and political knowledge were factors that uniformly increased viewers discernment when it comes to deep fake. Congress can focus on bolstering those instead of enacting broad. I dont think i find myself in such a position today. Nowhere is the importance, potential or efficacy of counterspeech more important than in the context of political campaigns that is the fundamental basis of our democracy and we have already seen its effectiveness in rebutting deep fakes. We expect more of that, campaign related speech is put under the most powerful microscope we have and we should not presume that voters would be asleep at the wheel. Reflexive vote legislation prompted by fear of the next technological boogieman will not safeguard us. It has kept us free. If we sacrifice that fundamental liberty and discard that tried and true wisdom that the best remedy for false or bad speech is true or better speech, no law will save our Democratic Institutions, they will already have been lost. More details on the issues in written testimony. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today, i look forward to your questions. Thank you, mr. Cohn. Im going to turn over to senator merkley in the interest of our schedule here but i wanted to just ask one question and then i will come back, twofold question. I want to make sure you all agree theres a risk posed by the use of ai to deceive voters and undermine our elections. Do you all agree with that . Okay, great. And then secondly last you believe that you should work and we vary on how to do this but do you believe that we should work to ensure guardrails on price that protect voters from this threat . Okay. Great. Well, thats a good way to begin. Im going to over senator merkley and then we will go to senator fisher and i think senator warner who has kindly joined us has a scheduling crunch as well. Senator merkley. Thank you so much madame chairman and really this is such an important issue. Im struck by a conversation i had with a group of my friends who said how do we know whats real in political discourse because we hear one thing from one Cable Television and another from another and i said well one thing that you can do is go to trusted sources and listen to the candidates themselves but now we are talking about deep fakes where the candidates might be profoundly misrepresented. I wanted to start by turning to you, mr. Potter in front row of former chair of the federal election and currently its not uncommon in ads to distort a picture of an opponent, they get warped, blurred, taked a little bit to look evil. Is there anything right now that is a violation of federal election law . Okay. Thank you. You have your microphone on there . Okay, you said no. Its not. And what if what if in an ad an individual quotes their opponent and the quote is false, is that a violation . No. Its not a violation of law well, wait a minute. If you had a candidate misrepresenting what their opponent had said under the current fec rules, if the candidate did it themselves and they were misrepresenting the speaker, then it possibly could be. So an advertisement in which one candidate says, hey, my opponent took this position and said such and such, thats not true, that is not true, thats a violation . If you are characterizing what your opponent said, i think that would not be a violation. It would be perhaps a mischaracterization. If you create a quote and put it in the mouth of your opponent and those words are inaccurate, then the fec would look at it and say, is that a misrepresentation of the other candidate but it would have to be a deliberate creation of something that the opponent had not said quoting as opposed to the candidates opinion of what they had said. So would a candidates use of completely falsified digital image of the opponent saying law . I think it would. Having that message come m a trusted source a Community Leader and identified as whomever suddenly barack obama is on the lion telling you youre supposed to vote on wednesday. Its such a presentation today a violation of the law. Thanks for the question. I am hung up on a couple details. He might have the answer to that one but i would say arguably, yes other forms of law. You said that they are not credible. Theres a 2020 study that 85 of the folks said these are credible and its much improved since then. Im not sure why you feel that adp fake, a welldone one is somehow not credible when studies have shown the vast majority of people see them and go i cant believe that person said that, they believe the fake. Thank you for the question. A study that actually studied a deep fake of senator warren particularly so they could test whether or not misogyny played a role found in terms of identifying whether something is a deep fake or not. I want to summarize by saying my overall impression is the use of deep fakes in campaigns whether by a candidate or thirdparty can be powerful and can believe what a silly and so said or what position they took because our eyes see the real person and so im pleased we are holding this hearing and i appreciate your testimony. Thank you very much, senator merkley. Thank you, madam chair. You mentioned ai tools are already common in the creation and distribution of digital ads. Can you talk about the Practical Implications of the law that would abandon or severely restrict the use of ai or that would require broad disclosure . Thank you for the question. So, laws like this would mean requiring disclosures for example with the sweep in a lot of advertising content. Imagine you are a lawyer advising a candidate on an ad that they want to run. If having ai generated content in the ad means it cant be run or it has to have a disclosure, the lawyer is going to try to figure out whether or not there is ai generated content and as i pointed out in my testimony, that is a very broad category of content. I know we all use the term deep fake, but the line between deep fake and tweaks to make somebody look slightly younger in there and had is blurry and drawing the line in legislation is difficult. So i think that in ad campaigns as a lawyer advising the candidate you will tend to be conservative especially if it is the defamation lawsuit with damages where the defamation is per se so i think if the consequences are high, lawyers will be conservative and it will show a lot of speech. And it could add to increased cost of elections, couldnt it because of the increased cost in ads where you would have to meet those requirements so the time you are spending their . Absolutely, increased cost less effective conveying the content and crowding out the message and it could raise. You advocated an approach to preventing potential election interference that judges outcomes instead of regulating tools. What would that look like in practice . Part of the issue that i am hearing a lot of concerned about the deceptive content in ads and campaigns overall and at the question is why are we limiting if that is the concern why are we limiting it to ai generated content . When i say outcome neutral test, we would a test based on the things we are worried about not the tools used to create it so i would encourage the committee to look at broader than ai the concern is with a certain type of outcome lets focus on that outcome and not the tools used to create it. I understand why all paid political advertisements already require at least one disclaimer, the Supreme Court has long recognized that compelled the disclaimers could infringe on First Amendment rights. In your view, would an additional ai a specific disclaimer and political advertisement violated the political speakers First Amendment rights . Thank you for the question, senator. I think there are two things to be concerned about. First, the government still has to have a constitutional sufficient interest and when it comes to the kind of disclaimers its the identification of the speaker who is talking to us and giving this add to that helps us determine whether we credit that add or view it as some kind of skepticism. Its one thing to further that interest and it can make a difference in how someone sees a message but that ties into the second problem that as was said, everything uses ai these days. If the interest is making people a little more circumspect about what they believe, that actually creates the same problem secretary simon said if everything has a disclosure nothing has a disclosure and it gives cover for bad actors to put these advertisements out. The deceptive ones are going to be just viewed as skeptically because everything has to have a disclosure so im not sure of theproposed disclosure was actuy further the government interest unless it is much more narrowly drawn. Some people proposed using reasonable person standards to determine whether anna ai generated images deceptive. Youve used that word here. Can you tell us how this type of standard has been used to regulate speech and other content . Thats a great question because who knows what the reasonable person is. But generally speaking i think it is part of the standard to impose when youre talking about Something Like political speech. And it falsehoods in our democracy. It was played as a determining role in the genocide. Facebook said that they may lose some sleep over this. That was their response. Thousands were killed, tortured and raped and displaced as a result of what happened on our platform with no oversight or attempt to try to deal with it. Stories went viral. The Washington Post reported how they have built a Propaganda Machine with tens of thousands spreading disinformation and inflammatory religious content. When the wild players hit the we operatives capitalized on the death of the neighbors get at the destruction of their homes claiming that this was the result of the secret weather weapon being tested by the United States and to bolster their claims it included what appeared to be a i generated photographs. Big tech has allowed the content to course through the platforms for almost a decade and we have allowed it to course through the platforms. Our inability to deal with this is enormously costly. That is a critical part of our democracy and journalism and politics but it cant be an excuse for not acting. These are foreign actors and the audio somehow we are going to throw up the First Amendment in their defense cant be the answer. We have to have a debate to be sure we need to write legislation here that does not compromise or unconstitutionally infringed. Im almost out of time but in the seconds i have left could you discuss the information that is played for the new regulation to grapple with traditional social media platforms as well as the new ai models that we are talking about here today . And im sorry to leave you so little time. Thank you. And to be very brief and explicit, weve been working on these issues for a decade. What we have seen when they have policies in place prohibiting to say you cant spew hate speech and disinformation without either demoting it or labeling it or are taking you off the platform potentially for the worst offenders and yet what weve seen is sadly and frankly and not consistent enforcement of those policies and most recently, actually pulling back from some of the policies that enabled not only a safe space for people to interact, we should acknowledge for eightyearolds weve seen double the rate of eightyearolds on youtube double so it is significant what we have seen both in terms of telling people they cant vote or sending them to the wrong place, but its even worse because we saw a video that went viral out of georgia that gets to arizona and then elected officials who callout vigilantes which essentially intimidates from dropping off their ballot. Its such an important point they were telling the American People they couldnt go someplace to vote. They dont have a First Amendment right to do that. Thank you for your patience integrated leadership. I want to associate myself with a lot of the concerns that have been raised by the various members of the committee today. The senate as a whole is having a complete. I think leader schumer and others to consider the balanced thinking to minimize but at the same time to be mindful of the benefits across the board so while i share concerns i have questions relative to the potential benefits of ai. One example is the identification of the misinformation super spreaders. There are some small players and big players responsible for why. I see some heads nodding. Another example is in the enforcement of the rules and regulations, one example google announced to the political ads that use synthetic content for a disclosure to that affect to identify the content would be an important tool for enforcing. What are two other examples . As i said in my statements its already created and made it easier to produce the content. One of the things that comes to mind immediately is the tool that lets you upload a sample of video and pick a language to translate it into and it translates not just of the audio but also the image so that it looks like the person is speaking in that language. That type of tool to quickly be able to reach an audience that may be was harder to reach for the campaign before especially if you dont have deep resources, i think that is a powerful potential tool. Thank you. I think one tool that could benefit both voters and election workers for the development of the Media Literacy and disinformation toolkits that could be branded and disseminated by the local offices do you think it would be helpful to have resources from the federal level to boost the Media Literacy and counter information . Thank you and its good to see you. When it comes to disinformation and misinformation i think you put your finger on it. Media literacy does matter. I. E. Alluded to in my testimony the trust of the Sources Initiative of the secretaries of state the more we can do to channel people to trusted sources however they made to find out, id like to think the secretary of States Office but some may think its a county or city or someone else i think that would be quite helpful. Thank you. While we cannot combat disinformation without fully understanding where the disinformation comes from and how it impacts for nonpartisan groups dedicated to studying and tracking disinformation to help our Democratic Institutions combat it. But they are now facing the campaign from the far right under the guise of fighting censorship to hold the research into and work to highlight the information. One example, the Election Integrity Partnership Led jointly by stanford internet observatory washington center. To manipulate the information environments and the campaign the researchers are being silenced and its happening even as some platforms are getting their own trust and safety teams that helped to guard against election hoaxes and disinformation on their platforms. Ms. Wiley, what impact do researchers have on the health or information ecosystems . Acquired sadly and disturbingly we are seeing the Chilling Effect take effect meaning we are seeing Research Institutions changing what they are researching and how and i think one thing i give her she could about the panel is the shared belief not just in the First Amendment but the importance of information and learning and the importance of making sure we are disseminating it broadly and theres nothing more important right now than understanding the disinformation and how better to identify it and the way i think everyone on the panel has named, so i think we have to acknowledge and certainly theres enough there is enoughindication from r education in particular that it has had a devastating impact on the ability to understand what we desperately have to keep researching and learning about. Thank you very much and thank you for your patience and that of your staff. I want to thank everyone. We couldnt have had a more thorough hearing and i want to thank senator fischer and of the members of the committee for the hearing and also the witnesses for sharing their testimony, the range of risks with of the emerging technology and going in with us about potential solutions and what would work. I appreciate that every witness acknowledged that this is a risk to our democracy and every witness acknowledged we need to put on some guardrails. While we know we have to be thoughtful about it, i would emphasize the election is upon us. Of these things are happening now. I would ask people watching the hearing that are a part of this within different candidates or different sides that we simply put some guardrails in place. I personally think giving some Clear Authority is going to be helpful then of course doing some kind of band for the most extreme fraud is going to be really important, and im so glad to have a number of senators joining me on this including conservatives on the republican side and then figuring out the provisions that work and that has been the most eyeopening to me as we have the hearing today about which things we should cover and how we should do that. I dont want that to replace the ability, and this is what im very concerned about to actually take some of the stuff down that is just allout fraud in the candidates voices and pretending to be the candidate. So clearly the testimony underscores the so clearly the testimony underscored the importance of congressional action. I look forward to working with my colleagues and bipartisan manner as we did in the last congress and last years including not just the electoral count bill that we passed through this committee with leadership in this committee but the work in security changes needed at the capital along with senator peters and portman in the Homeland Security committee, the list of recommendations that the Ranking Member at the time and i and those two leaders came up with most of which have been implemented with bipartisan support and a history of trying to do things on a bipartisan basis and that cries out right now for the senate to take the lead hopefully before the end of the year. We look forward to working on this as we approach the election at as soon as possible. The hearing record will remain open for a week. Would like to be speedy and hope the network is not shut down at the time. We are hopeful given the nearly 80 of the senate that supported the bill last night that senator mcconnell and senator schumer put together, to avoid a government shutdown. We go from there in that spirit and this committee is adjourned. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspan is your unfiltered view of government funded by these Television Companies and more including charter communications. Charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers and we are just getting started. Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructu to reach those who need it most. Charter communications supports cspan as a Public Service along with these other television provirs materiality. What is material to a group of voter, how does the about the ey greater power of ai and misinformation, disinformation, the level of usage as childs play to what happened in russias 2016 interference tools that are existing now i think would be naive to underestimate that, and we are dealing with a threat of a different magnitude. I applaud what youre doing and i think if we look at this, where the existing tools are right now with an increase in power where can they have the most immediate effect that could have huge negative consequences and it doesnt have to be generated by a place like china, but the generated the areas where public trust is the key and the glue that keeps the institution stuck together. Youve identified one in the question of public elections and we have seen how the public trust has been eroded using somewhat now tools in 2016 and thank goodness they finally required the fact that the political ad on facebook has to have the disclosure as you know some of your legislation. We still have law number one the equalize Disclosure Requirements on social media to equalize the traditional tv and broadcast. The other area for the consideration for the panel may be for a later time is the fact that the other institutions that are as reliant on the public elections that could have the same kind of devastating effect if ai tools immediately are used based on public markets. Theres been one example so far where the tool of a false depiction of the pentagon burning had a disruption in the market, childs play frankly. Maybe not a fortune 50 company but fortune 100 to 500 companies the ability to not to simply use the prefix but to generate tools that would have massive holes information about products across a whole series of other. The imagination is pretty wild and i would welcome my colleagues that came from the classified briefing on the tools that are being deployed by the adversaries using ai. Somehow this notion that if theres already a law, why do we need anything else . Theres plenty of examples where because the harm is potentially so great, weve decided either in the higher penalty level certain kinds of the lower threshold of proof or extreme cases a prohibition if the harm is so great we have to think twice as a society, murder is murder but if its created by a terrorist, there is a higher differential level of society is implied a different level of heinousness of that. We have hugely catastrophic effects and we might then overreact but i do want to make sure i get into the question. One of the things we found where russia disproportionately targeted a black communities in the country with misinformation and disinformation. We came from the hearing i was referencing where the Freedom House indicated that prcs current influence operations some using ai tools into some not are once again targeting the black communities in the country. Dont you think if the tools that were used in 2016 are now 100 or thousand because of the power of the models into the generative ai, dont we need to take some precautions in this space . Thank you, senator and we absolutely must. What you are quoting is extremely important. Its also important to note when we look at the research and the study that came out just last year showed a minimum of 33 to 50 of all people over of 2,005 people took the deep fake to be accurate and what they found his increased exposure actually deepened the problem so the notion that you see it over and over again from different sources can deepened the belief in the deep fake. Im saying that because part of what weve seen, and its not only foreign governments but certainly it includes them but also domestic hate groups utilizing social media and utilizing the opportunity, and we are starting to have a lot of concerns about some of the waste of Technology Particularly with chat bots and text message can vastly increase exponentially the reach but targeting community is that are more easily made afraid or given false information about where he and how to vote but also i want to make this clear we are seeing it a lot with people who are lawfully allowed to vote but for whom english is not their first language. Theyve also been targeted particularly spanish speakers but also the asian community. So, we know that there is in a lot of social science and it shows that theres targeting of communities of color and it does go to the way that we see with Political Parties and political advertising the attack on the integrity of the systems and even whether the voters are voting law fully or fraudulently in ways that people are more vulnerable to violence. Very good. Thank you, senator warner. I know the senator was here earlier and we thank her for being here. Senator haggerty. Thank you. Ranking member for sure, go to to be with you both. I would like to start with you and if i could, to engage in a thought experiment with you for a few minutes. Lets go back to 2020. The covid pandemic hits. Many policymakers, experts advocating for things like mask mandates, shutting down schools, mandatory learning, that type of thing and many localities and states adopted mandates of that nature at the outset. I think we know the result of those mandates and great economic damage particularly to the Small Businesses and the setbacks considerably, loss of liberty. What i am concerned about is that congress and the Biden Administration may be finding itself right at the same place again when we are looking at Artificial Intelligence and i dont want to see us make the same set of mistakes. Id like to start with a basic question if i might and that is is Artificial Intelligence a term with an agreedupon Legal Definition . It is not. It doesnt even have an agreedupon technical definition. If you read one of the leading that many Computer Scientists are trained on, they describe four different categories of definitions, and underneath those there are many different types and that if you run through the list of things that have been considered ai in the past in which nobody really calls ai now, you have everything from detection which is in everybodys cameras to letter detection to playing chess to checkers, things that once it works we kind of stop calling it ai. Thats the classic phrase by the person that coined the phrase ai so there isnt an agreedupon Legal Definition and its quite difficult. Using broadly how we think about ai and ai tools, do political candidates and others that have engaged in political speech use ai today for routine functions like taking and editing pictures or for speech recognition or processing audio and video content . Absolutely. Ads are created using many different algorithms. This little device year has many different ai algorithms that are used to create content. Id like to use a scenario to illustrate my concern and id like to introduce this article for the record. Its one of many of the sites this. One of the proposals under consideration deceptive ai generated video and visual media that would include altering an image in a way that makes it inauthentic or inaccurate. That is a pretty vague concept for example, age may be a very relevant factor in the upcoming elections. You may recall me recent media reports describing how President Bidens appearance is being digitally altered and photographs to make him look younger. So my next question, the Biden Campaign if they were you to use Photo Editing Software where they use ai to make joe biden look younger and the picture on his website, could the use of Artificial Intelligence violated such a law against inaccurate or inauthentic images . Potentially i believe it could and the question should be why does that, the use of those tools violate it and not the use of makeup and lighting to make somebody look younger. Is there a risk in a very uncertain concept like ai might kill the political speech . Absolutely. My concern, too. At the administration and should not engage in the regulation with uncertain impacts and i believe a great risk to the political speech. We should immediately indulge to do something as they say it will fully understand the impact of the technology especially when that something encroaches on political speech. Its not to say there arent significant numbers of issues, but my concern is the solution needs to be thoughtful. Thank you. Thank you very much, senator haggerty. I will start with you, senator and get some im sorry, secretary of state simon, and get at some of the questions senator haggerty was raising. First because all my colleagues are here and i havent asked questions yet, what state has consistently had the highest voter turnout of all the states in america . Especially because senator bennett is here and has always been in a close race with me for colorado so put that on the record. So, senator haggerty has raised some issues and i wanted to get at what we are doing here with of the bill senator holly certainly not a member of the Biden Administration that senator holly and i have introduced with senator collins and a senator ricketts, senator bennett has been such a leader, senator kunz and others will be getting in on it as well, so this will gets out not just any cosmetic changes to how, but it gets that materially the deceptive acts. This gets at the fake ads showing donald trump hugging doctor fauci which was a lie. Thats what it gets out. The person that looks like Elizabeth Warren but isnt Elizabeth Warren claiming that republicans shouldnt be allowed to vote. It is of grave concern to people on both sides of the aisle. Can you talk about and help us with this kind of materially deceptive content that has no place in our elections . Thank you for the question. I think that is the key the materiality test. Courts it seems all are well equipped to use the in terms of drawing lines and i dont pretend to say i think the senator is correct and right to point out that its difficult congress and any legislative body needs to get it right, but though the line drawing exercise might be difficult, courts are equipped under Something Like the materiality standard to draw that line and i think that materiality really in the realm of elections is not so different from other realms of the national and its true as others have said that the political speech, the bar from political speech is high, but in some sense it is no different than if someone were to Say Something false in the healthcare field. If someone says something is totally false, a false positive or negative attribute its if someone says breath mints cure cancer or cause cancer or Something Like that, i dont think we have the same hesitation. Political speech of course theres a high bar, but courts, given the right language such as the materiality test could navigate through that. Right. Im going to turn to mr. Potter but i know that even in the recent decision the Supreme Court decision by Justice Barrett 7the Supreme Court would join by Justice Barrett, justices roberts, thomas, alito, goresuch and cavanaugh stated the First Amendment doesnt shield a fraud. So the point is that we are getting at a very specific subset, not what mr. Cohen was talking about with a broad use of some of the technology that we have on political ads. You would be a good person to talk to, you were a republican appointee chair of the fcc. Can you expand on how prohibiting materially deceptive ai a generated content in the election falls squarely in the framework of the constitution . Thank you, madam chair. The court has repeatedly said that it is constitutional to require certain disclosures so the voters have information about who is speaking and there i think Justice Kennedy and Citizens United was very clear in saying voters needed to know who is speaking to put it in context so who the speaker is informs the voters decisions as to whether to believe them or not so in those circumstances talking about disclosure it seems to me particularly urgent to have voters know the person who is allegedly speaking is fake, that the person who they think is speaking to them or doing an act is actually not that person so there it is the negative five yes, who is paying for the ad, but is the speaker actually of the speaker . That would fit within the disclosure framework. In terms of the prevention of fraud, i think that those two, the fact that the court has always recognized that the integrity of the election system and a citizen face in that system is what makes this democracy work and so to have the circumstance where we could have the deep fake and somebody is being alleged to Say Something they never said or engage in an act they never did is highly likely to create distrust where you have a situation where that occurs, the comment has been made to the solution is more speech, but i think we all know, and there is Research Showing this, we intuitively know i saw with my own eyes is a very strong perspective and to see somebody and hear them engaging in a surreptitiously recorded racist and misogynist comments and then have the candidate, whose words and image has been portrayed say thats not me, i didnt say that, thats all fake. Are you going to believe what you saw and a candidate that says that isnt me, that is the inherent problem. Thank you. I think we know it could happen on either side and why we are working so hard to try to get this done. I would also add on the disclosure comment with scalia who said in 2010 for the opinion for my part i do not look forward to a society that thinks to the campaigns anonymously hidden from public scrutiny and protected from accountability of criticism. If that doesnt resemble the home of the brave so theres been an indication why the senator and senator collins and bennett and a number of the rest of us drafted a bill that had the ability to look at this and in anarrow fashion but also allw for satire and the like and i did find i went over and told senator warren some of your points interesting when we get beyond the ones that would be banned which ones the disclaimer applies to and that we may want to look at that in a careful white so we dont have every ad it becomes meaningless so i did appreciate those comments. With that, im going to go to senator also off because he has to leave and then senator welch who has been here for quite a while and to senator bennett even though he does represent the largest state in the nation and former secretary of state so hopefully that order will work. If you need to trade among each other please do. Thank you madam chair and i think you just got to the root of the matter very officially and elegantly. Mr. Cohens, i appreciate your comments but i think the matter thats being discussed here is not subjective complex judgments about subtle mischaracterization in public discourse. We are talking about, for example senator fischer one of your political adversaries will fully, knowingly and with extreme realism falsely depicting you or any of us or a candidate challenging us making statements we never made indistinguishable from a realistic documentation of our speech. Thats the most significant threat i think we are talking about here. In your opinion, isnt there a compelling Public Interest to end short of that kind of knowingly and willfully deceptive content whose purpose is not to express an opinion or caricature but its to deceive the public about statements made by candidates isnt there a compelling interest in regulating that . Absolutely the court would recognize that compelling interest i also think there is no argument that there is a compelling interest in fraudulent speeches as the chair noted so i think what you would find here is that either circumstance where we are talking about the sort of deep fake as opposed to the conversations about did you use a computer to create the text but when you are creating a completely false image i think we would have a compelling Public Interest and no countervailing Public Interest the First Amendment goes to say what we think without being penalized that the whole point of the conversation is you are falsifying the speaker. It is creating this fake speech where the speaker never actually said it that would support the speech with the fabrication of statements made by the candidates. The distinction i draw the court protected a candidate saying i think this even if its false or my opponent supports or opposes that may be a mischaracterization and deceptive but if its what im saying engaging in my First Amendment speech mischaracterizing thats in the political give and take but i think thats completely different from what we are talking about here where you have an image or a voice being created saying something it never said and its not me characterizing it it is putting it in the image of this candidate. Is it your position that the broadcast advertisements that knowingly and willfully mischaracterize the candidate for office and i dont mean mischaracterize it in the position or give a shaded opinion what they believed, stand for or may have said in the past but he picked them saying things they never said for the purpose of misleading the public about what they said is that your position that should be protected speech . Its one thing to say the word fraud but it generally requires reliance and damages and so stripping those requirements and presuming them takes us outside of the conceptual fraud that we know. I think there are circumstances which i would probably agree with you things crossed the line but take for example first in 2012 the campaign that infamous lines out of president obamas speech in the you didnt build that campaign, he didnt denigrate the hard work of Business Owners but instead was actually referring to the infrastructure that supported those businesses and in the last, the Biden Campaign was accused of cutting out about 19 sentences or so from the President Trump Campaign Rally the broad effect causes the constitutional concern to be the government interest with of the deceptive advertising in the political arena are subject to regulation on the basis that there is the outright deception such as putting words in senator fischers mouth in a highly realistic way your argument is that the question is not the Technology Used to do so the question is the materiality and the nature itself is that your position . I think drawing the statute is exceedingly difficult. I think in principle is a pie in the sky concept. Im just not sure how to get from point a to point b. And forgive me for invoking the example. A very good. Thank you. I will point out that while network tvs have some requirements and they take the ads down that isnt going to happen online and thats one of our problems we feel we have to act and make clear they have the power to act because otherwise we are going to have the wild west on the platforms where a lot of people are getting their news nobody wants to be censored, so i get that and that flying is a very porous but the example the senator gave was not about political speech it was flatout fraud and whether it was a i a generated word older technologies and broadcasts would you agree that there should be a remedy for that. Its a difficult to refine but the conclusions again dont do anything. To doing something totally false versus the broad definition of political speech and then one other thing i want to ask there has to be an expectation the platforms like google take some responsibility for whats on the platform and theyve been laying off the folks whose job it is to monitor this and make a judgment about the flatout deception so how do we deal with of this and then the second what is your observation about the platforms like twitter and google and facebook and essentially laying off all folks whose job it was in those organizations to be reviewing the material that is so dangerous for democracy. I think what you are hearing from all the panelists is that it is important to have a carefully crafted narrow statute to withstand Supreme Court scrutiny and also to work. So the language that gets used that is going to be the key question. I dont know who is going to draft the statute. We will let all of you do that. But what about the platforms laying people off so that we dont even get realtime information. It gets on the falls advertising out there and we can to verify that its false. One more lien on the first question. The snippets being taken from the speech and then mischaracterized that falls on the line of thats defensible, permissible speech that falls into the arena that we argue with each other whether it was right or wrong because in his example those people actually said that and you are interpreting or misinterpreting them but they said that. That is where i draw the line and where you are creating words they didnt say the technology we heard about where my testimony today because ive been talking enough can be put into a computer the end of my voice pattern can be used and create an entirely different thing where i sat here and said that this is ridiculous you shouldnt be holding of the thie shouldnt regulate any of this. Rearranging somebodys speech to Say Something truthful even if it is a misrepresentation, if i had of this, your recording of the speech, we were talking about using whatever technology to have somebody Say Something i never said in a place i never went. It would really depend. You could have somebody saying something they didnt say and maybe it makes you look good. Its not defamatory in any way. Its truth will be deposited on you. It would be hard to draw a line in a way that would ban one and not the other. Senator bennett. Thank you madame chair and thank you for the bill that youve allowed me to cosponsor as well. Its a good start in this area and thank you to the witnesses for being here. Not everybody up here i think everybody on the panel is grappling with the newness of ai. Its not something that is new. This is going to be a question for you. It was common in the 20th century for observers of journalism or journalists themselves to say if it bleeds it leads and digital platforms which have in many cases i think tragically replaced traditional news media and turned this into the center of their Business Model creating algorithms that are stoked but to their platforms to sell advertising to generate profit. Is that has found its way into the political system. Autocrats exploited the platforms and algorithms to undermine the trust and the institutions and elections with each other. As a member of the Intelligence Committee just being horrified by not just the russian attack but also the fact that it took facebook forever to even admit that it had happened. That they had sold ads that would then be used to anonymously attack and spread