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The White House has urged Republican lawmakers in Utah to abandon a bill that would force AI companies to implement public safety measures, escalating its confrontation with states trying to rein in the technology.
A memo the White House sent to Utah lawmakers last week and seen by the FT, said: “We are categorically opposed to Utah HB 286 and view it as an unfixable bill that goes against the administration’s AI agenda”.
Republican representative Doug Fiefia, a former Google employee, proposed the Artificial Intelligence Transparency Act. It is supported by another Republican, Senator Mike McKell, and was advanced last month by a legislative committee in Utah with a Republican majority.
The legislation would mandate developers of leading AI models to implement and publish public safety plans that outline how they are mitigating cyber security risks, while also establishing a comprehensive child safety plan and whistleblower protections.
A White House official said the administration objected to the bill due to its resemblance to California’s SB53, which critics claim added unnecessary bureaucratic burdens on American AI companies as they try to compete with China.
The White House’s opposition to the bill is likely to exacerbate a conflict between the Trump administration, whose AI policy is run by close allies of the industry, and Republican legislators who favour tighter controls of the nascent technology.
The administration last year twice failed to pass a federal bill that would prevent states from introducing their own AI legislation, a step it argued was necessary to preserve America’s AI dominance. The legislation faced fierce opposition from Republican congressmen and senators, as well as governors including Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Arkansas’ Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.
Shelving the legislative route, Trump signed an executive order in December that threatened to withhold federal funds from states that implemented “onerous” AI legislation. The order also established an AI litigation “task force” at the Department of Justice, which is charged with challenging state laws deemed to thwart the administration’s agenda.
The order initially mollified some of the administration’s Republican critics, after the inclusion of carve-outs for child-safety laws, and after White House advisers hinted that the order was primarily aimed at stopping “woke” AI regulations proposed by Democratic-led states.
But the letter to Utah legislators will alarm Republican lawmakers across the US, who have introduced legislation in the belief that the administration would not directly challenge them.
More than 100 AI-related measures have been introduced in Republican-led states since the start of the year, according to FT analysis.
Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox has also emerged as a critic of the administration’s stance. “The minute you decide to use [AI] tools to give my kid a sexualised chatbot, then it’s my business, and it’s the government’s business,” Cox said at an event last year.
“Congress should not be stopping us from being able to [set guardrails].”
Fiefia did not respond to a request for comment.
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