WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said on Friday that Congress should “preempt state AI laws” that it views as too burdensome, laying out a broad framework for how it wants Congress to address concerns about artificial intelligence without curbing growth or innovation in the sector.
The legislative blueprint outlines a half-dozen guiding principles for lawmakers, focusing on protecting children, preventing electricity costs from surging, respecting intellectual property rights, preventing censorship and educating Americans on using the technology.
House Republican leaders swiftly endorsed the framework and said they’re ready to work “across the aisle” to pass legislation, but doing so would be a heavy lift, requiring agreement with Democrats in the Senate as public divisions over AI run deep.
The announcement comes as state governments have forged ahead on their own regulations for AI while civil liberties and consumer rights groups lobby for more regulations on the powerful technology. The industry and the White House have pushed back, arguing that a patchwork of rules would hurt growth. Trump signed an executive order in December to block states from crafting their own regulations.
“This was in response to a growing patchwork of 50 different state regulatory regimes that threaten to stifle innovation and jeopardize America’s lead in the AI race,” said White House AI czar David Sacks in a social media post Wednesday.
Sacks said the next step is to work with Congress to turn the administration’s principles into federal legislation.
While passing sweeping AI legislation will be difficult, especially in a midterm election year, the framework appeared designed to appeal to some AI-wary Republicans and Democrats with a focus on widespread and bipartisan concerns, such as the harms that AI chatbot companionship can pose to children and the electricity costs of AI infrastructure.
“It covers basically all the key sticking points I think that might stop an AI bill from moving through Congress,” said Neil Chilson, a Republican former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission who now leads AI policy at the Abundance Institute. “It reads to me as an attempt to build a larger tent, even if it doesn’t give everybody everything that they want.”
But it has already been panned by some Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who said in a statement it “fails to address key issues, including strong accountability for AI companies, under the guise of protecting children, communities, and creators. Americans need protection — but this means nothing if we allow the AI industry to be the Wild West.”
Whether AI legislation can pass both chambers of Congress could also rely heavily on the support of Republicans like U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who has introduced her own AI bill, and last year was instrumental in thwarting Trump’s earlier attempt to deter state governments from regulating AI. Blackburn on Wednesday called Trump’s framework a roadmap and welcomed the administration to the “important discussion” of getting a bill passed.
Four states — Colorado, California, Utah and Texas — have already passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, but the White House is calling for “strong federal leadership” to make sure the public can trust how AI is being used in their lives. The state-level laws include limiting collection of certain personal information and requiring more transparency from companies.
As backlash against data centers has increased along with rising power prices, the White House had previously stepped up pressure on AI companies and the power sector to do more to address the issue — including having AI companies sign voluntary pledges earlier this month to build their own power generation plants.
The Trump administration says it doesn’t think Congress should preempt all state regulatory powers over AI, including enforcement of general laws against AI developers, “to protect children, prevent fraud, and protect consumers.” It also says Congress shouldn’t interfere with local authorities in deciding where to place data centers and other AI infrastructure, or how states procure their own AI tools for law enforcement or education.
However, it says states “should not be permitted to regulate AI development,” shouldn’t penalize AI developers for a third party’s unlawful conduct using their product, and “should not unduly burden Americans’ use of AI for activity that would be lawful if performed without AI.”
Some AI safety advocates are pushing for Blackburn and other influential Republicans to insist on more protections against AI’s most catastrophic risks, such as out-of-control AI agents or the widespread replacement of human workers — which Trump’s framework does not address.
“We have companies that explicitly are hoping to replace human labor,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a former Republican strategist who now leads The Alliance for Secure AI. “Tinkering at the edges with upskilling and job training is just not going to make an impact on that. I just don’t think we as a country are taking this seriously enough.”
The framework aims for a more balanced approach to another controversial topic: AI and copyright.
It recommends against wading into the legal fights between artists and creators and the technology companies that have ingested huge amounts of copyrighted works to build AI systems that can generate new text, images and sound.
The Trump administration “believes that training of AI models on copyrighted material does not violate copyright laws,” according to the document, but acknowledges “arguments to the contrary exist and therefore supports allowing the Courts to resolve this issue.”
That language was welcomed by trade group AI Progress — a coalition that includes Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Midjourney and OpenAI.
Tech companies have been fighting dozens of copyright infringement lawsuits from writers and publishers, visual artists, music record labels and others. Judges have largely sided with AI developers in allowing for the “fair use” of copyrighted works to create something new, but some have questioned how the materials were obtained. A federal judge in September approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and authors who allege nearly half a million books had been illegally pirated to train its chatbot.
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O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
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