Senate debates revised state AI regulation ban

Two key U.S. Republican senators agreed to a revised federal moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence to five years and to allow states to adopt rules on child online safety and protecting artists’ images or likelinesses.

Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz originally proposed securing compliance by blocking states that regulate AI from a $42 billion broadband infrastructure fund as part of a broad tax and budget bill.

A revised version released last week would only restrict states regulating AI from tapping a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure.

Under a compromise announced Sunday by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a critic of the state AI regulatory moratorium, the proposed 10-year moratorium would be cut to five years and allow states to regulate issues like protecting artists’ voices or child online safety if they do not impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI.

Tennessee passed a law last year dubbed the ELVIS Act to protect songwriters and performers from the use of AI to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of well-known artists. Texas approved legislation to bar AI use for the creation of child pornography or to encourage a person to commit physical self-harm or commit crime.

It is not clear if the change will be enough to assuage concerns. On Friday, 17 Republican governors urged the Senate to drop the AI plan.

“We cannot support a provision that takes away states’ powers to protect our citizens. Let states function as the laboratories of democracy they were intended to be and allow state leaders to protect our people,” said the governors, led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voiced his support for the revised measure, calling it a pragmatic compromise. “Congress should stand by the Cruz provision to keep America First in AI,” Lutnick wrote on X.

Congress has failed for years to pass any meaningful AI regulations or safety measures.

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, said the Blackburn-Cruz amendment “does nothing to protect kids or consumers. It’s just another giveaway to tech companies.” Cantwell said Lutnick could simply opt to strip states of internet funding if they did not agree to the moratorium.

—By David Shepardson, Reuters