In brief
- The White House proposed federal AI standards while preserving key state enforcement powers.
- The framework aims to avoid creating a new AI regulator, relying instead on existing agencies and courts.
- The plan also focuses on child safety, free speech, infrastructure, and copyright disputes.
The White House on Friday released a sweeping national policy framework for artificial intelligence, outlining recommendations to Congress that would set national standards for AI while relying on existing federal agencies—rather than creating a new regulator.
The proposal comes as states move ahead with their own AI laws, which the Trump administration has criticized as a burdensome “patchwork” of requirements for companies.
“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 in a statement. “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.”
The framework urges Congress to set national AI rules that address child safety, innovation, free speech, and intellectual property, while preempting state laws it views as burdensome. It also says those federal standards should not override states’ existing authority to enforce laws on issues like fraud, consumer protection, and child sexual abuse material.
The Center for Democracy and Technology said the proposal includes “some sound statements of principles,” but does not resolve competing priorities.
“Its usefulness to lawmakers is limited by its internal contradictions and failure to grapple with key tensions between various approaches to important topics like kids’ online safety,” CDT Vice President of Policy Samir Jain said in a statement shared with Decrypt.
Jain also said the framework contradicted the White House’s own position on government influence over AI platforms.
“It rightly says that the government should not coerce AI companies to ban or alter content based on ‘partisan or ideological agendas,’ yet the administration’s ‘woke AI’ executive order does exactly that,” he said.
The framework follows earlier efforts by the Trump administration to curb state-level AI regulation. In November, a draft executive order outlined steps to challenge state laws and restrict funding to those that enacted laws that were seen as contradictory to the order.
Despite the administration’s attempts to set a federal standard, states have continued to pass their own measures. In October, California enacted SB 243, which would require AI companion chatbots to identify themselves and restrict certain interactions with minors while imposing disclosure rules on large developers.
The White House’s framework also said parents should be given more control over how children interact with AI systems, and that Congress should enact better protections against abuse.
“The administration is calling on Congress to give parents tools to effectively do that, such as account controls to protect their children’s privacy and manage their device use,” the White House said. “The administration also believes that AI platforms likely to be accessed by minors should implement features to reduce potential sexual exploitation of children or encouragement of self-harm.”
The administration also said that while it views AI training on copyrighted material as lawful, it believes courts should decide the issue, adding that Congress “should not take any actions that would impact the judiciary’s resolution of whether training on copyrighted material constitutes fair use.”
The proposal also calls for a federal law to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated deepfakes, expanding on a bipartisan law signed by Trump last year that made non-consensual intimate images and deepfake porn a federal crime. The new framework, however, comes with exceptions for parody, satire, news reporting, and “other expressive works protected by the First Amendment.”
The plan ties AI policy to infrastructure and economic goals, including faster permitting for data centers and ensuring residential electricity costs do not rise as a result of AI infrastructure buildout under a proposed “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.” It also calls for expanded use of on-site and behind-the-meter power generation to support data center development and improve grid reliability, along with incentives to expand AI adoption and access to federal datasets.
Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen called the proposal “a national framework to protect Big Tech at the expense of everyday Americans.”
“It is an extraordinary payback to the Big Tech companies that have lined up to throw pocket change at Trump’s inauguration, and for his ballroom, and for the Melania movie, and to settle bad faith lawsuits and more,” co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement shared with Decrypt.
Weissman said the focus on preempting state laws could leave gaps in oversight, arguing that without new federal standards, limiting state action would reduce regulation. He pointed to ongoing state efforts addressing issues such as deepfakes, AI companions, and algorithmic decision-making.
“This is a disgraceful proposal that, happily, will be dead on arrival in Congress,” Weissman said. “It does, however, show yet again that Donald Trump aligns his interests with the biggest corporations and the billionaire class, not those of the American people.”
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