Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, abandoned a compromise late Monday on an amendment to the Republican domestic policy package that would block state laws on artificial intelligence, making the move after a burst of harsh criticism for the revision.
Ms. Blackburn and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had agreed late Sunday to decrease a proposed moratorium on state laws regulating the technology to five years from 10. Their revision also included new language specifying that any current laws related to A.I. could not pose an “undue or disproportionate burden” to A.I. companies.
But following an outcry by consumer protection groups, state legislators and Democratic lawmakers, who criticized the language as overly broad and said it could wipe out state laws on child safety and consumer protections, Ms. Blackburn reversed course.
Ms. Blackburn said in a statement on Monday night that while she appreciated Mr. Cruz’s “efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need these protections the most. This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.
“Until Congress passes federally pre-emptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework,” her statement continued, “we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens.”
It was not immediately clear what would happen to the amendment, which was first proposed in a House version of the bill. Ms. Blackburn introduced a motion Monday night to strike Mr. Cruz’s original amendment banning state A.I. laws for 10 years.
Democrats and consumer protection groups earlier Monday had warned that the new language introduced in Sunday’s compromise could strip consumers of important protections provided by state laws aimed at warding off robocalls, regulating social media algorithms that steer users toward harmful content and prohibiting child sexual abuse imagery.
“This cloak-of-darkness ‘compromise’ reached by Senators Blackburn and Cruz last night sells out America’s families and kids in the name of Big Tech,” said Previn Warren and Lexi Hazam, lawyers leading a federal lawsuit by school districts and families against social media companies for harming children.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Law Center warned that the definition of A.I. was “extremely broad” and could jeopardize laws in several states, including Texas, that force companies to verify users’ ages to keep minors off pornography sites, many of which involve automated systems, the group said. Last week the Supreme Court upheld Texas’ age-verification law.
The proposed ban on state A.I. laws stems from a proposal championed by Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana. On May 22, the House’s approved version of the bill included the “Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative,” a 10-year moratorium on state A.I. laws.
One month later, the provision passed an important review by the Senate parliamentarian, causing a lobbying frenzy by tech companies urging members to pass it.
A.I. investors and entrepreneurs — including OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, and Anduril’s founder, Palmer Luckey — rallied around the measure. They argued that a patchwork of state laws on A.I. would hamper the nation’s development of the technology.
“This is the right move. Happy to join our Little Tech partners to support Senator @tedcruz’s effort,” Collin McCune, a lobbyist for venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said on social media last week. “The U.S. can’t win the AI race if Little Tech is buried under 50 different rulebooks.”
But state attorneys general pushed back. Last month, 40 Republican and Democratic attorneys general sent a letter to members of Congress calling for them to kill the ban on A.I. state laws.
On Monday, a Republican member of the Texas State Senate, Angela Paxton, wrote Mr. Cruz and the state’s other senator, John Cornyn, also a Republican, asking them to kill the amendment. Texas recently passed an A.I. law that banned discrimination and behavioral manipulation by the systems.
Ms. Paxton warned that the states’ A.I. laws protected consumers and that the mandate would violate the rights of states to enact and enforce their own laws.
“Surely we can all agree that these kinds of state protections do not interfere with legitimate innovation and are reasonable and appropriate,” Ms. Paxton said in the letter, which was posted on her official social media account.
On Monday afternoon, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, filed a motion to strike the A.I. moratorium from the Republicans’ legislation.
“It’s just another giveaway to tech companies,” Ms. Cantwell said in a statement. “This provision gives A.I. and social media a brand-new shield against litigation and state regulation.”
Michael H. Keller contributed reporting.
Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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