On March 20, 2026, the White House released a comprehensive national legislative framework outlining policy recommendations to address rising concerns related to artificial intelligence ("AI"). The framework includes seven primary points:
1. Protecting children and empowering parents, including acknowledging the applicability of existing child privacy protections to AI systems, and providing parents with tools to control children's privacy settings.
2. Safeguarding and strengthening American communities, including mitigating rising electrical costs associated with AI infrastructure, combating AI-enabled scams, and enhancing national security capabilities.
3. Respecting intellectual property rights and supporting creators, primarily by allowing the judiciary to resolve whether the doctrine of fair use protects AI providers' ability to train AI models with copyrighted materials.
4. Preventing censorship and protecting free speech, through preventing government influence in content moderation based on ideological grounds and providing redress against the federal government where an agency has engaged in efforts to censor expression on AI platforms.
5. Enabling innovation and ensuring American dominance, including establishing regulatory sandboxes and providing federal datasets to industry and academia, while discouraging any new rulemaking bodies from regulating AI.
6. Educating Americans and developing an AI-ready workforce, including by ensuring that existing education programs incorporate AI training, studying trends in task-level workforce realignment, and bolstering the ability of land-grant institutions to provide technical support, launch demonstration projects, and youth programs.
7. Establishing a federal policy framework, preempting cumbersome state AI laws, asserting that Congress should preempt extensive state AI regulation because AI development is an "inherently interstate phenomenon," the growth of which would be hindered by "patchwork" state laws, while preserving the right of states to legislate in the areas of child protection, consumer protection, and fraud prevention.
Takeaways
The administration's new legislative framework signals a clear focus on American technological competitiveness and a recognition of the American public's rising concerns about the impact of AI in the domains of consumer privacy, the job market, and intellectual property. The Framework also underscores the goal of achieving a unified national approach to AI regulation, which leaves open questions regarding the impact the Framework may have on state-level regulation.
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