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Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I thank the leader for his support for these bills, but also for his bipartisan work on artificial intelligence, including the group that he put together with Senator Heinrich and Senator Rounds and Senator Young to really lead a bipartisan effort. One of the major focuses of that effort has been doing something on the democracy front.

While some of these bills actually passed through the Commerce Committee today on a bipartisan basis to start the initial work of some sensible guardrails on AI, the democracy work actually can't wait because, as the leader pointed out, we are less than 100 days from this election; and we are seeing States act across the country--red States, blue States, purple States--putting some simple rules in place for this new sophisticated technology.

I always believed that our laws have to be as sophisticated as those that are trying to mess with them, and we cannot simply stand by on the Federal basis for the Federal elections--we are not talking about messing around with their State rules. They are doing their own rules. We are talking about Federal elections when it comes to involvement with AI.

AI, as we know, is set to become one of the most significant technological advances of our time. Like with any emerging technology, it brings tremendous opportunities, but it also brings tremendous risks and uncertainties. I think David Brooks, the columnist, put it well when he wrote:

The people in A.I. seem to be experiencing radically different brain states all at once. I've found it incredibly hard to write about A.I. because it is literally unknowable whether this technology is leading us to heaven or hell.

Well, it is on us right now as the elected representatives of the people of this country to make the decision of what fork are we going to go on. If we put no guardrails in place when it comes to scams, when it comes to messing around with people's intellectual property rights, when it comes to national security, when it comes to democracy--which is our topic today--then we are not going to unleash the potential and the great opportunities of AI because we will not have put the guardrails in place to make it safe.

This means protecting ourselves from the significant risks AI poses without stifling innovation and working to preserve trust in business, government, and our elections, as we all adapt to this rapidly advancing technology.

With this year's election so soon in front of us, we must put in place these commonsense rules. We have heard repeatedly about the potential of AI to upend our election. All of our witnesses from both parties agreed that this was a threat when we had our hearing. And at the bipartisan AI forum that I just mentioned, there was consensus that Federal legislation is necessary; that disclaimers are not enough in some cases; and that it is critical to our national security.

By the way, these AI videos or fake robocalls or videos of people that aren't really the candidates that you don't like or you do like-- if you don't know who you are watching, how are you going to be able to make your decision as a citizen in this great democracy?

And, by the way, these could be promoted by foreign governments, by foreign countries. We have seen this in Canada where they just completed an investigation and found that China had meddled in their elections, in their elections for parliament seats.

This is happening right now, and we need the ability to take these things off or at least label them so people know what they are viewing and what they are listening to. This is a hair-on-fire moment.

AI has the potential to turbocharge the spread of disinformation and deceive voters. This is happening to candidates on both sides. In the New Hampshire primary on the Republican side, a video was released with fake AI-generated images of former President Trump hugging Dr. Fauci. That wasn't true. We have seen AI being used to generate viral misleading content about our colleagues in this Chamber, including a fake video with Elizabeth Warren--that wasn't really Elizabeth Warren-- telling people that she didn't think that Republicans should be allowed to vote. Complete lie. It wasn't her. But it looked like her and talked like her.

We have seen this all over the country, and that is why States have been acting; 18 States across the country have already passed laws in this area, including my home State of Minnesota, which banned deepfakes of candidates 90 days before an election. Texas has a ban on deepfake videos of candidates. And that passed unanimously; the Minnesota bill, I think, one person voted against it. Democrats and Republicans joined together to say: We are not going to have these deepfakes because they could happen on either side, and our citizens aren't going to know who they are looking at and if it is the real Donald Trump or if it is the real Kamala Harris or if it is the real Amy Klobuchar or the real Senator Fischer.

Other States who have done something on this: Alabama--these have been mostly disclaimers--Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you listen to those States, you are not like, Oh, those are all blue states. Oh, those are all red states. Those are Governors and legislatures that decided we cannot just take this as it is not going to be a problem, and it is all fun and games. They have decided that: We have got to make sure our citizens know, for State political advertising, what is going on here.

Some tech companies are also taking action because they know that this technology has a potential to sow chaos in elections, but we cannot rely on a patchwork of State laws for just about half the States--probably what it will end up being--and voluntary commitments, as important as those are.

That is why as chair of the Rules Committee, we held a markup in May where we passed three bipartisan bills to take this head on.

I am calling on the Senate today to pass, first of all, the bipartisan bill with Senator Hawley, the lead Republican with me on this bill; with Senator Coons, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Bennet, and many others to ban AI-generated deepfakes of Federal candidates, within the framework of the Constitution.

So what does that mean? Well, that means an exception for parody and satire as well as reporting by news organizations. So we drafted this bill with Democratic and Republican lawyers in a way that it could be upheld in court under the Constitution.

Our bill is supported by a bipartisan group of more than 40 national security experts and current former government officials, including former Secretaries of Defense Chuck Hagel, a Republican, and Leon Panetta, a Democrat, and Secretaries of State from both parties. It was also endorsed by the former Republican Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter, as well as tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce.

These companies actually want to be able to say: This is a deepfake. It is not the actual candidate, and there is a law that says we have to take it down.

That is what this is about, as well as allowing the defamed candidate--the person who it is not really the person in the video or the ad or the robocall--to sue whoever has done this to them. That is the way in other areas in our law we are able to stop bad conduct.

In the House, a bipartisan companion bill is led by Representative Derek Kilmer of Washington and Tony Gonzales of Texas.

With election day approaching, we have the opportunity to come together on a bipartisan basis to counter the threats that AI poses to our elections and protect public trust and faith in our democracy.

Now, there is a second bill that I will call for in a moment that deals with things that are maybe parody or things that don't rise to the level of the deepfakes or are in a different category that could complement this bill as well. But this is for the worst of the worst. And that is why we have had strong support from a conservative like Senator Hawley, who certainly is aware of what the Constitution says and what our rights are; moderate Republican like Senator Susan Collins; and many others to support this bill. So now I will call for this bill.

As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 388, S. 2770; further, that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Yes. This was the bill--

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. 2770, which is the deepfake bill. The other bill is 3875, the Klobuchar-Murkowski bill, which is the disclaimer bill.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I will note again that Senator Hawley is the lead Republican on this bill, and I don't think for a minute that he would allow for a bill that is something that he disagrees with when it comes to being radical or broad or anything like that. He simply agrees with me, as does Senator Collins, that we have a major, major issue here with these deepfakes that are going to extend to, say, what happened in New Hampshire, which involved a fake robocall ad from President Biden that people believed was him calling on people not to vote. That case is, of course, being investigated by a Republican Attorney General, and a case is being brought in New Hampshire.

But the point is this is just the beginning. We haven't even entered the general election yet. That will start at the end of August. And so that is why time is of the essence here, and that is also why we drafted this bill with Democratic and Republican lawyers in a method that was narrowly tailored so that it would abide by the Constitution.

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