During a press conference held over Zoom, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, joined by their respective states' attorneys general, elaborated on their host of concerns with what they described as a "harmful" provision tucked in the budget reconciliation bill currently before Congress that would institute a 10-year moratorium on states' ability to enforce laws or regulations pertaining to AI.
The U.S. House of Representatives has already approved the budget reconciliation package containing the proposed AI moratorium, and U.S. Senate leaders have said they are hoping to send the bill to President Donald Trump's desk by July 4. But the AI provision has been met with backlash by both policymakers and advocacy groups, which have argued that the federal government's inaction on overseeing AI systems makes action by the states all the more important.
Cantwell and Blackburn echoed these sentiments Wednesday, arguing that while AI has the potential to offer great benefits to society and the U.S. should keep striving to be a global leader in this field, allowing this emerging technology to proceed unchecked would be a mistake.
"We need a national standard, but until we get it, it is our states that are filling in the gaps," Blackburn said. "You can't just say we're not going to regulate or enforce state laws for a period of 10 years, because think of what would happen to individuals in that period of time."
Cantwell, who described the proposal as "very problematic," said that she wasn't sure if her colleagues were fully aware of how broadly the proposed moratorium would sweep, noting that it has the potential to erase dozens of state laws that protect consumers from data misuse, bias and other harms that could arise from AI use.
"We should be fighting to protect consumers, not enabling AI theft or fraud to happen," said Cantwell, who serves as the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Some measures that could be impacted include laws that states have enacted or are weighing that protect against AI-generated explicit material and deepfakes, require basic disclosures when consumers are interacting with certain types of AI, prevent the use of AI-powered tools to set rental rates and give consumers the ability to opt out of profiling done by AI systems.
The Tennessee policymakers in particular focused on a groundbreaking new state law, known as the Elvis Act, that was enacted last March and prohibits the use of AI to mimic songwriters, performers and music industry professionals' voices without their permission.
Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee's Republican attorney general, stressed Wednesday that these protections are vital because while "technology moves fast, unfortunately the federal government does not."
"We need to make sure in the process that we're not leaving consumers behind," Skrmetti said. "If there's a 10-year moratorium on state enforcement, then for 10 years consumers are going to be at the mercy of the judgment of Big Tech."
Supporters of the AI moratorium, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have argued that it would be "a very dangerous thing" for all 50 states "to have a patchwork of regulations on AI" that companies would need to navigate.
But Skrmetti countered that ensuring that AI systems aren't being allowed to operate without oversight for a decade "dramatically exceeds whatever benefit you get from preventing states from weighing in."
Washington's Democratic Attorney General Nick Brown, who voiced concerns of his state's legislative efforts to regulate the use of AI in political campaigns and the work of his office's AI task force being preempted by a moratorium, agreed that undermining or axing state laws without replacements at the federal level would be "harmful" to consumers.
"We all recognize that the federal government has the ability to preempt the regulation of AI, but they shouldn't do that when there's no other protections at the federal level," Brown said.
The attorneys general, who both signed onto a letter last month urging the House to reject the AI moratorium proposal, also voiced concerns about the potential breadth of the contested provision, which they noted could be read to cover many of their existing authorities that fall well outside the AI sphere.
"The tech industry's lawyers can read things very broadly," Skrmetti said, pointing to the arguments that they have made in the ongoing fight over the scope of the liability shield for tech companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
"When I read this moratorium, my immediate thought is this could kill the application of all of our consumer protection and antitrust laws, period, to essentially all technology," he added. "Now I'm not conceding that that's the case, but certainly there will be arguments to that effect."
The senators additionally criticized lawmakers' move to condition state funding for the broadband investment and deployment program to their compliance with the proposed moratorium, which Cantwell said "makes no sense," and their attempt to slip the provision into the funding bill in the first place.
Cantwell revealed that she had submitted written materials and was waiting for a decision from the Senate parliamentarian on the contention that moratorium doesn't satisfy the Senate's Byrd rule, which requires reconciliation measures to have some budgetary effects. Both Cantwell and Blackburn argued Wednesday that the moratorium would represent a "huge change in public policy" that was inappropriate for a budget bill.
"This is not the type thing that we put into reconciliation bills," Blackburn said. "We are working to move forward with [AI-related] legislation at the federal level, but we do not need a moratorium that would prohibit our states from stepping up and protecting citizens in their state."
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
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