An AI voice clone that converses live: Raman's campaign accuses a pro-Bass PAC of impersonation

By KTLA · October 26, 2026.

The campaign of Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, filed complaints on Monday with California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) and with the city's Ethics Commission. The complaints target Thrive LA PAC, a political action committee that supports Mayor Karen Bass. A PAC is an organization that raises and spends money to influence elections.

According to Raman's campaign, Thrive LA has put up billboards around the city inviting people to call a phone number presented as Raman's. Her team says callers reach an AI-generated voice clone that speaks in the first person as the candidate and holds a live conversation, making up answers to voters' questions. The complaint argues that the call does not disclose that it is a machine and does not say who is paying for the service.

Raman's campaign alleges violations of several California laws. One is Section 20012 of the Elections Code, which prohibits the malicious distribution of digitally fabricated audio that makes a candidate appear to say something they did not say, within the 30 days before an election. Another is Section 84514 of the Government Code, which requires committee ads with content generated or substantially altered using AI to include the phrase “Ad generated or substantially altered using artificial intelligence.” The campaign also alleges failures to meet disclosure requirements.

Raman spokesperson Liz Garcia called the conduct “sad and illegal.” According to the campaign, the line is funded by “private equity executives and conservative donors of Thrive LA.” The Bass campaign had not responded to the allegations when KTLA published its story. All of the above are allegations from one side: the available material shows no ruling from any agency and no response from Thrive LA. KTLA adds that some social media users were outraged by the billboards, while others treated them more as a joke.

Our take: what matters is not just the case itself but the technical category. The laws cited in the complaint refer to “fabricated audio” and “ads,” concepts designed for a recorded piece that gets distributed. A clone that generates new answers on every call is something else: a conversational agent speaking in the voice of a real person. According to Raman's campaign, that difference is the key, because the AI “does not simply play a fabricated recording” but generates new statements. It remains to be seen whether regulators apply those laws to this format or whether there is a loophole.

More broadly, the technology to clone a voice from a few minutes of audio and hold a low-latency conversation is available to anyone, and a candidate with hundreds of hours of public speeches is ideal source material. That shifts the risk: the problem is no longer the fake viral video, which can be debunked, but thousands of private, one-on-one conversations that nobody audits. The most effective defense is traceability: every interaction with AI should disclose that it is AI and say who is paying for it.

In the short term, this points to campaigns with more impersonation, more complaints and more distrust of any voice on the phone. It is an uncomfortable transition, and the rules will need to be tightened and updated based on evidence, without regulating out of panic. In the long term, the same technology now being used to deceive will let any citizen ask a verified assistant about each candidate's actual proposals. Getting there requires one basic rule: AI can speak, but it has to say what it is and who sent it.