US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at blocking states from enforcing their own artificial intelligence (AI) regulations.
“We want to have one central source of approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
It will give the Trump administration tools to push back on the most “onerous” state rules, said White House AI adviser David Sacks. The government will not oppose AI regulations around children’s safety, he added.
The move marks a win for technology giants who have called for US-wide AI legislation as it could have a major impact on America’s goal of leading the fast-developing industry.
AI company bosses have argued that state-level regulations could slow innovation and hinder the US in its race against China to dominate the industry, with firms pouring billions of dollars into the technology.
The BBC has contacted AI firms OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic for comment.
But the announcement has been met with opposition.
The state of California, which is the home to many of the world’s biggest technology companies, already has its own AI regulations.
California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, who is a vocal critic of Trump, issued a strongly-worded statement in response to the executive order, accusing him of corruption.
“Today, President Trump continued his ongoing grift in the White House, attempting to enrich himself and his associates, with a new executive order seeking to preempt state laws protecting Americans from unregulated AI technology.”
Earlier this year, Newsom signed a bill requiring the largest AI developers to lay out plans to limit risks stemming from their AI models.
States including Colorado and New York have also passed laws regulating the development of the technology.
Newsom has said the law sets a standard that US lawmakers could follow.
Other critics of Trump’s executive order argue that state laws are necessary in the absence of meaningful guardrails at the federal level.
“Stripping states from enacting their own AI safeguards undermines states’ basic rights to establish sufficient guardrails to protect their residents,” said Julie Scelfo, from advocacy group Mothers Against Media Addiction in a statement.
But having individual states craft their own laws has created a patchwork of rules that can be harmful to the American AI industry, said Michael Goodyear, an associate professor at New York Law School.
“It would be better to have one federal law than a bunch of conflicting state laws. However, that assumes that we will have a good federal law in place,” he told the BBC.
The tech lobby group NetChoice celebrated the executive order Thursday.
“We look forward to working with the White House and Congress to set nationwide standards and a clear rulebook for innovators,” said its director of policy Patrick Hedger.
