Scoop: FEC Chair on AI and the First Amendment

House Democrats are asking the federal government to crack down on memes generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Led by Rep. Shontel Brown (D., Ohio), a group of Democrats is requesting that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) “expeditiously consider” a proposal that would punish political campaigns or “their agents” if either use artificial intelligence to “fraudulently misrepresent other candidates or political parties.”

FEC chairman Sean Cooksey told the Washington Reporter such a request will be denied under his tenure. 

“Your First Amendment rights don’t disappear because you use an AI image generator to express yourself,” he said. “While the FEC will continue to enforce the campaign finance laws on the books, I oppose any effort to suppress political speech by regulating a technology that few agencies even understand. Our elections should be decided at the ballot box after a free exchange of arguments and ideas.”

AI policy-makers also criticized the Democrats’ request.

“This is the way Democrats roll in Washington: this letter to the FEC is actually [a warning to Cooksey] saying ‘do this or we’ll fire you. This is not a request. It’s a threat. It would be a shame if Kamala wins and fires you,’ is its implication” a senior House Republican staffer said, adding that the proposal is “an extension of [the Democrats’] war on Elon Musk. He took away their toy, so now they’re going to take away his technology.” 

In their letter to the FEC’s acting general counsel, Democrats targeted Elon Musk’s X. The platform, Democrats claimed, “introduced their [sic] AI image generator Grok-2 with few rules to combat its misuse. In fact, there are no policies that would allow the platform to restrict images of public figures that could be potentially misleading.” 

The letter comes as multiple Biden administration agencies have targeted various Musk-owned companies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has attempted to hinder Musk’s rocket launches.