It’s now unlawful within the US for robocallers to use AI-generated voices, due to a brand new ruling by the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the FCC expands the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, to cowl robocall scams that comprise AI voice clones. The new rule goes into impact instantly, permitting the fee to high quality corporations and block suppliers for making a lot of these calls.

“Bad actors are using AI-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities, and misinform voters,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel mentioned in an announcement on Thursday. “We’re putting the fraudsters behind these robocalls on notice.”

The transfer comes just a few days after the FCC and New Hampshire legal professional normal John Formella identified Life Corporation as the company behind the mysterious robocalls imitating President Joe Biden final month earlier than the state’s main election. At a Tuesday press convention, Formella mentioned that his workplace had opened a felony investigation into the corporate and its proprietor, Walter Monk.

The FCC first introduced its plan to outlaw AI-generated robocall scams by updating the TCPA final week. The company has used the regulation previously to go after junk callers, together with the conservative activists and pranksters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman. In 2021, the FCC fined them greater than $5 million for conducting a massive robocalling scheme to discourage voters from voting by mail within the 2020 election.

“While this generative AI technology is new, and it poses a lot of challenges, we already have a lot of the tools that we need to grapple with that challenge,” Nicholas Garcia, coverage counsel at Public Knowledge, tells WIRED. “We can apply existing laws like the TCPA, and a regulatory agency like the FCC has the flexibility and the expertise to go in and respond to these threats in real time.”