Two senior senators have reached a compromise on an amendment in the Republican economic policy bill that would block state laws on artificial intelligence.
Senators Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, agreed late Sunday to decrease a proposed moratorium on state laws regulating the technology to five years from 10.
But Democratic lawmakers and consumer protection groups on Monday criticized new language in the amendment that would create a higher standard for the enforcement of existing tech-related state laws, including those for online child safety and consumer protections. Any current laws related to A.I. cannot pose an “undue or disproportionate burden” to A.I. companies, according to the amendment.
That broad language could allow tech companies — almost all of which are developing A.I. — to challenge existing state laws and regulations that apply to the use of a wide-range of automated technologies, legal experts said.
Democrats and consumer protection groups warned that the new language 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, but a new federal mandate on A.I. could change that.
The ban 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, have rallied around the measure. They’ve argued that a patchwork of state laws on A.I. will 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 have 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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