The US FCC Is Gearing-Up With AI To Fight Relentless Junk Robocalls And Texts

Artificial Intelligence is bleeding into every facet of technology, especially those that have to do with mundane life tasks and grunt work. One such example of this Google demonstrated five years ago when the company showed AI booking hair appointments and dinner reservations, with humans on the other end of the line. Most recently, though, the thought has become that this same sort of AI technology can also be used to fight robocalls and spam.

Earlier this week, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced an inquiry “that would take a closer look at how artificial intelligence impacts illegal and unwanted robocalls and texts.” While one might think this only means how malicious actors are using AI to generate robocalls and texts, as it turns out, the FCC wants to fight the annoying problem with every tool available. Rosenworcel explained, "While we are aware of the challenges AI can present, there is also significant potential to use this technology to benefit communications networks and their customers—including in the fight against junk robocalls and robotexts.”

If adopted, the high-level bullet points of the inquiry would also request comment on “If the Commission should consider ways to verify the authenticity of legitimately generated AI voice or text content from trusted sources.” This would seem to indicate a concern about the use of AI voice or text in spam calls, which could end up being more scarily effective than the standard robot saying, “We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.”


Regardless of the concerns or goals, this inquiry could provide the FCC with some interesting insights into AI's usefulness for protecting consumers. Further, it will be quite interesting to see if the commission finds an increase in the use of AI for also generating spam texts and calls. As such, we'll have to keep an eye on where this goes, so stay tuned to HotHardware for the latest.