The White House is pausing a controversial plan to preempt state-level AI laws, leaving the tech industry to navigate a fractured map of local regulations, as reported by Reuters. The move stalls a federal effort to create a single, unified framework for artificial intelligence.
Plan of attack: The now-shelved draft order would have created an “AI Litigation Task Force” to challenge state laws and empowered the Commerce Secretary to withhold federal broadband funding from non-compliant states, according to details from CNBC and The Hill.
The states step up: With the federal push on ice, states are in the driver's seat. A wave of transparency laws is taking shape, with states like California and Florida mandating disclaimers on AI in political ads, while New York is targeting 'synthetic performers' in advertising—a move Georgia is looking to copy.
Corporate workarounds: The regulatory vacuum is pushing some companies to create their own solutions. Google, for example, has already rolled out SynthID, a tool designed to embed an imperceptible watermark into its AI-generated content.
For now, the push for a unified national AI rulebook, similar to Europe's GDPR, is at a standstill. This leaves businesses to contend with a messy and growing patchwork of state-by-state rules, creating an uncertain environment for innovation and compliance.
While the White House pauses domestic AI rules, other parts of the government are moving fast. Amazon is making a $50 billion bet to land government cloud AI deals, while Washington separately weighs allowing Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to China. Meanwhile, the power of state-level decisions remains clear, as Waymo just got approval for a major expansion in California.
