As President Trump talks up ambitious housing initiatives at the World Economic Forum this week, a new Fannie Mae video ad circulating on social media, which features an AI-generated version of his voice, has a message for banks.

The AI voiceover in the ad that was pinned to housing official Bill Pulte's X account, was said to be used with the president's permission. But what is said in the ad may matter just as much to lenders.

The ad expresses goals that include "working with banks so lending doesn't stop, capital keeps moving, and people aren't locked out because their past wasn't perfect," while indicating institutions like Fannie are there to protect housing that "feels out of reach for too many."

"When banks can say yes, families can move forward," the ad goes on to say.

Although the ad names only Fannie Mae and not fellow GSE Freddie Mac, it nods to both by echoing a recent change to Great American Mortgage Corporation's tagline that uses a plural reference.

New credit-related lending opportunities and risks

Talk of giving more access to borrowers "because their past wasn't perfect" points to people whose history of repayment has lapsed at times, which the ad suggests may have happened "not because they stopped working hard, but because the system stopped working for them."

This suggests Fannie will be working with banks to open up the credit box, which could be constructive if done carefully, so long as it doesn't go to the extremes that some see as having caused the crisis that forced the government-sponsored enterprise into conservatorship.

If Fannie plans to open up the credit box, how it does so could make a big difference to players in the private mortgage market, which often is defined as starting where the underwriting boxes of the government-related loan buyer and its twin, Freddie Mac, end.

However, some of the stated goals for Fannie and Freddie have included an interest in giving the private market some space, and a large part of it has been dedicated less to lending down the credit spectrum than accepting alternative income types.

As for authorized use of the president's cloned voice, it does point to the rising risk of deepfakes in the mortgage industry due to AI, which industry professionals have suggested is a technology that can remedy the problem it caused, through its application to fraud detection tools.

More on another policy that hearkens back to pre-crisis

The interest in opening up the credit box is in line with broader interest in a return to some other pre-crisis practices, one of which is the contemplated ban on institutional investor purchases, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo at Davos.

Those large players first entered the market in bulk amid the housing crash and the officials do currently plan on following through with this idea with a distinction for "mom-and-pop" buyers who hold on the order of 10-12 properties, he said.

"We don't want to push the mom-and-pops out," Bessent said.

He noted that while the institutional investor share is low overall, it is "much higher in boomtown markets like Charlotte, like Atlanta, like Huntsville, Alabama."