Here’s how the White House wants Congress to regulate AI

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.

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. But 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.

“The Trump Administration is committed to winning the AI race to usher in a new era of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people,” the White House said Friday in announcing its framework. “Achieving these goals requires a commonsense national policy framework that both enables American industry to innovate and thrive and ensures that all Americans benefit from this technological revolution.”

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 artificial intelligence 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 framework 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.”

There are dozens of lawsuits pending 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 artificial intelligence company 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.