Comment by National Consumer Law Center

To ensure that callers will comply, we urge the FCC to tie these two requirements together by interpreting “consent” in this context to mean that when a subscriber consents to receive calls that use AI-generated technology, they are consenting only to receive calls that include the disclosure at the beginning of the call. This would mean that any call that includes AI-generated technology that does not include the disclosure will not have been consented to by the recipient. We also explain that callers who have already received consent from a called party to send them artificial voice calls should be permitted to rely on that previously provided consent for AI-generated calls, so long as the recipient will have no, or only minimal, interaction with the AI in those calls, and the calls use a generic human voice, rather than that of a specific human being. If the voice of a particular human being is used for the calls, the recipient must have provided prior express consent to receive AI-generated calls from that specific person. Moreover, for all calls that do anticipate interaction with the AI technology, as we explain, this in-call disclosure is essential to protect telephone subscribers from confusion and deception, especially in collection and telemarketing calls. It is important that the Commission not treat all AI-generated calls differently based on the type of line to which the calls are made—to cell phones or to residential lines. In other words, there should be no exemptions allowed for a certain number of calls to residential lines without consent, as there are for some non-telemarketing calls.