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Billboard Women in Music 2024
President Biden called for a ban on voice spoofing by AI in his State of the Union address Thursday night, a nod to a growing problem in the entertainment and technology industries.
“Here at home, I have signed over 400 bipartisan bills. There is still much to pass on my unity agenda,” President Biden said, adding that he would work on it if elected to a second term. He began listing a series of different suggestions. “Strengthen penalties for fentanyl trafficking, pass a bipartisan privacy law to protect children online, harness the promise of AI to protect us from harm, ban AI voice impersonation, and more.”
The president did not elaborate on what kind of guardrails or penalties he plans to put in place regarding technological advances or whether they would extend to the entertainment industry. AI was a top concern for SAG-AFTRA last year when the actors union negotiated and went on strike with major studios. The talks ultimately ended in an agreement setting out consent and compensation requirements for production companies that use AI to reproduce actors’ likenesses and voices. But the deal didn’t prevent studios from training AI systems to create “synthetic” performers that bear no resemblance to real humans.
Biden’s State of the Union address also featured a flurry of small squats from heckling lawmakers, including Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Greene came to the proceedings wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The broadcast was then cut to reveal Greene screaming during Biden’s speech.
