[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 175 (Tuesday, October 24, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5127-S5128]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Artificial Intelligence

  Madam President, next, I would like to turn to a different topic.

[[Page S5128]]

  Seeing is believing, we often say. But that is not really true 
anymore because, thanks to artificial intelligence, we are increasingly 
encountering fake images, doctored videos, and manipulated audio. 
Whether we are watching TV, answering the phone, or scrolling through 
our social media feeds, it has become harder and harder to trust our 
own eyes and our own ears. The boundaries of reality are becoming 
blurrier every day.
  We have always consumed information under the assumption that what we 
are seeing and hearing is coming from the source that it says it is 
from and that a human has created it. It is such a basic notion that it 
is left unsaid and taken for granted. But right now, that assumption is 
under threat.
  Deception is not new. Fraud is not new. Misinformation is not new. 
These are age-old problems, of course. What is new, though, is how 
quickly and easily someone can deceive or defraud and do it on a 
staggering scale. With powerful generative AI tools at their 
fingertips, all con artists need are just a few minutes to spin up a 
scam or a lie: doctored images falsely claiming that there was an 
explosion at the Pentagon, fake advertisements using the likenesses of 
celebrities like Tom Hanks to peddle products, phone calls that 
replicate the voices of family members purporting to be kidnapped and 
needing money, manipulated audio clips of elected officials saying 
things they did not say.
  These are just some of the examples of misuse we have already seen. 
It is not a parade of horribles about the future of AI; these are 
things that already happened.
  We are only scratching the surface of what is possible with AI, and 
because the possibilities are so vast--much of it yet to be 
discovered--it is easy to feel overwhelmed by it all, to think it is so 
complex, you don't even know where to start. But we do know where to 
start.
  This issue of distinguishing whether content is made by a human or 
made by a machine actually has a very straightforward solution. Content 
made by AI should be clearly labeled as such so that people know what 
they are looking at. That is exactly what the bipartisan AI Labeling 
Act that Senator Kennedy and I introduced calls for. It puts the onus 
where it belongs: on the companies and not the consumers--very 
straightforward--because people shouldn't have to double- and triple-
check or parse through thick lines of code to find out whether 
something was made by AI. It should be right there in the open, clearly 
marked with a label.
  Labels will help people to be informed. They will also help companies 
using AI build trust in their content. We have a crisis of trust in our 
information sources, in large part due to polarization and 
misinformation. But if the current situation seems bad without 
guardrails, the coming onslaught of AI-generated content will make the 
problem much, much worse. Misinformation will multiply. Scams will 
skyrocket. Labels are an important antidote to these problems in the 
age of AI.
  Whether we are ready or not, AI is here, and in the not too distant 
future, it will reshape virtually every facet of our lives--how we 
work, how our kids learn in school, how we get healthcare, to name a 
few. So to wait to take action or, worse, to do nothing at all is not a 
good option. We have seen that movie before with foreign interference 
in our elections, with medical misinformation that claims so many 
lives, and with data breaches that left Americans exposed and 
vulnerable.
  This moment requires us to get serious about legislating proactively, 
not belatedly reacting to the latest innovation. Yes, Congress has a 
lot more to learn about AI, both its opportunities and threats. Yes, 
there is no simple answer or single solution for a very, very complex 
challenge and set of opportunities. But there is one thing we know to 
be true right now: People deserve to know if the content they are 
encountering was made by a human or not. This isn't a radical, new 
idea; it is common sense.
  There is a long road ahead for regulating AI in the policymaking 
space, but that should not prevent us from doing this good and sensible 
thing as soon as we can.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.