Big Bill's AI Regulatory Ban Was Shot Down 99-1

A proposal to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade was soundly defeated in the Senate on Tuesday, thwarting attempts to insert the measure into President Trump's big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts. The Senate voted 99-1 to strike the AI provision from the legislation after weeks of criticism from both Republican and Democratic governors and state officials. Originally proposed as a 10-year ban on states doing anything to regulate AI, lawmakers later tied it to federal funding so that only states that backed off on AI regulations would be able to get subsidies for broadband internet or AI infrastructure, the AP reports.

A last-ditch Republican effort to save the provision would have reduced the time frame to five years and sought to exempt some favored AI laws, such as those protecting children or country music performers from harmful AI tools. But that effort was abandoned when Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell on Monday night to introduce an amendment to strike the entire proposal.

• Blackburn said on the floor that "it is frustrating" that Congress has been unable to legislate on emerging technology, including online privacy and AI-generated "deepfakes" that impersonate an artist's voice or visual likeness. "But you know who has passed it? It is our states," Blackburn said. "They're the ones that are protecting children in the virtual space. They're the ones that are out there protecting our entertainers—name, image, likeness—broadcasters, podcasters, authors."
• Proponents of an AI moratorium had argued that a patchwork of state and local AI laws is hindering progress in the AI industry and the ability of US firms to compete with China. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who floated the idea at a hearing in May, tried to broker a compromise with Blackburn to save the provision.

• Cruz eventually withdrew the compromise amendment and blamed a number of people and entities he said "hated the moratorium," including China, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a teachers union leader, and "transgender groups and radical left-wing groups who want to use blue state regulations to mandate woke AI." He didn't mention the broad group of Republican state legislators, attorneys general, and governors who also opposed it.
• Even Cruz ultimately joined the early Tuesday vote to strip the proposal. Only Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who opposed Trump's broader budget bill, voted against eliminating the AI provision.
• The spending bill passed the Senate Tuesday, with Vice President JD Vance casting the decisive vote. Last month, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she wouldn't have voted for the House's version of the bill if she had known the AI provision was in it.