(NewsNation) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been using artificial intelligence to make robocalls contorting his own voice into several languages he doesn’t actually speak.
The mayor told reporters about the robocalls Monday and said they’ve gone out in languages such as Mandarin and Yiddish to promote city hiring events. They haven’t included any disclosure that he only speaks English, or that the calls were generated using AI.
“People stop me on the street all the time and say, ‘I didn’t know you speak Mandarin, you know?’” Adams said. “The robocalls that we’re using, we’re using different languages to speak directly to the diversity of New Yorkers.”
The calls come as regulators struggle to get a handle on how best to ethically and legally navigate the use of AI and deepfakes, especially in politics and election misinformation, and has prompted calls and moves toward greater regulation from government and major media companies.
A bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate would ban “materially deceptive” deepfakes relating to federal candidates, with exceptions for parody and satire. This month, two Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the heads of Meta and X, formally known as Twitter, to express concerns about AI-generated political ads on their social media platforms.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said they used ElevenLabs’ tool for their robocalls. Native speakers listened to the recordings before they went out to ensure the translations were accurate. Calls have been made in Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin, Cantonese and Haitian Creole. The city has also used the technology to promote a series of concerts organized by the Adams administration, the spokesperson said.
Adams defended himself against ethical questions about his use of artificial intelligence, saying his office is trying to reach New Yorkers through the languages they speak.
“I got one thing: I’ve got to run the city, and I have to be able to speak to people in the languages that they understand, and I’m happy to do so,” he said. “And so, to all, all I can say is a ‘ni hao.’”
