FCC may let AI robocalls hit your cellphone before midterms

Campaigns could soon be allowed to call your cellphone with AI-generated or prerecorded voices without asking first, if Trump's FCC grants a waiver conservatives are pushing for ahead of the midterms.

Federal law keeps most automated calls off mobile phones unless the recipient has agreed to them. The Club for Growth, a conservative economic group, wants political calls exempted. The FCC has opened the request for public comment, with responses due Oct. 19, and could rule by late October, just ahead of Election Day.

The group argues the rule is outdated, chills political speech and treats cellphones differently from landlines, which can already receive such calls. It says lifting it would help campaigns reach more voters, in more languages, and improve polling. Some limits would remain: recipients could opt out, and a caller could contact the same person no more than three times in any 30-day span.

Critics warn the change could unleash a wave of deceptive calls in the final stretch of a fight for control of Congress, including AI chatbots holding live conversations with voters. Commissioner Ana Gomez, the panel's only Democrat, predicted a "tsunami of robocalls and misinformation." Granting the waiver would mark a sharp turn for an agency that declared cloned-voice robocalls illegal in 2024, after a fake Biden recording told New Hampshire voters to skip their primary.