Proposed US state ban on regulating AI is halved to five years with some carve-outs
But independent legal think tank says new text won't protect existing state AI laws
WHAT’S HAPPENED?
A DEAL HAS BEEN struck between a Republican senator and the chair of the Senate’s commerce committee to reduce the proposed 10-year ban on US states from regulating AI to five years. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a staunch Trump ally who’s fiercely fought the state AI moratorium contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), said she’d reached an agreement with fellow Republican Ted Cruz.
According to an amendment released by Blackburn the five-year ban will only apply to those states accessing a $500 million AI infrastructure fund. Blackburn’s revised wording says states will still be able to regulate “child online safety, child sexual abuse material, rights of publicity, protection of a person’s name, image, voice, or likeness” but makes clear that the carve-outs only apply if state laws don’t impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI models and systems.
In a statement to The Hill Blackburn said she was pleased that Cruz had “agreed to update the AI provision to exempt state laws that protect kids, creators, and other vulnerable individuals from the unintended consequences of AI”. However independent legal think tank the Institute of Law & AI (LawAI) said the amendment “seemingly fails to protect the laws its drafters intend to exempt”. Among them is Tennessee’s ELVIS Act which seeks to protect musicians from the unauthorised use of their voices to generate AI deepfakes and voice clones.
LawAI’s Mackenzie Arnold and Charlie Bullock said the ELVIS Act, strongly supported by Blackburn who represents Tennessee in the Senate, was “likely to have a disproportionate burden on AI systems”, and warned the wording was likely “to generate additional litigation and uncertainty”. “It may also make it more likely that some generally applicable laws, such as facial recognition laws or data protection laws, will no longer be exempt because they may place a disproportionate burden on AI models/ systems,” they added.
Earlier, governors of 17 Republican states wrote to Senate major leader John Thune and House speaker Mike Johnson demanding the AI moratorium be removed from the tax and spending megabill. Their letter said that while they supported the OBBB and “President Trump’s vision of American AI dominance” they could not 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,” it added.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
✨ The sweeping OBBB is expected to face a final vote in the Senate later today as business managers rush to meet Trump’s imposed July 4 deadline for signing. According to Politico Blackburn and Cruz’s amendment isn’t expected to be debated as a specific item. There could, however, be further attempts to change the wording or drop the moratorium — which as we reported in our Weekly Newsletter is now being referred to by Cruz as both a “temporary” and “voluntary” measure. The Hill said it wasn’t clear how Republican senators who’d opposed the ban — holdouts include Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley — would now react. And waiting in the House is conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Green who has vehemently opposed the ban. So expect more twists ahead.
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