In the US House, Republicans just did something unusually bold that is not overly likely to make it through the Senate, but sends a powerful message about where policymakers stand on artificial intelligence (AI).

The House lawmakers have added a clause to their signature tax bill (H.R. 1, or as President Donald Trump refers to it, “One Big, Beautiful Bill”) that would ban states and localities from regulating AI for an entire decade. The brief but consequential provision, tucked into the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s sweeping markup, would be music to the ears of the AI industry, which has lobbied for a light touch regulatory approach – and one that is more uniform one than a system regulated by 50 different states.

If signed into law through the process known as reconciliation, the 10-year moratorium on state AI laws would mark one of the most significant federal actions on technology policy in decades.

But it faces long odds in the US Senate, where procedural rules may prevent its inclusion in the GOP legislation. “I don’t know whether it will pass the Byrd Rule,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), referring to a provision that requires that all parts of a budget reconciliation bill focus mainly on the budgetary matters rather than general policy aims.

Lawmakers have introduced scores of bills that would affect artificial intelligence, some with bipartisan support, but few have seen any meaningful advancement in the deeply divided Congress. (Well, there is an exception here: A bipartisan bill recently signed into law by President Donald Trump enacts stricter penalties on the distribution of intimate “revenge porn” images, both real and AI-generated, without a person’s consent.)

Viewpoints from both sides

Supporters of the moratorium say it would stop a confusing patchwork of state AI laws that have cropped up nationwide and give Congress space to craft its own AI legislation. Opponents call it a dangerous giveaway to tech firms that would leave consumers unprotected by the dangers posed by AI, such as manipulation by fraudsters through deepfakes and misinformation (among other things), and wipe out the state laws that address such things.

Presaging its probable steep climb in the US Senate, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) recently denounced the bill, expressing concern that it would override legislation that protects artists from deepfakes in her state. The bill has also been opposed by dozens of state lawmakers and attorneys general, including both Democrats and Republicans,

But tech leaders expressed support for the bill in testimony at a Senate hearing recently focused on AI regulation. Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, testified at that hearing that a “patchwork” of AI regulations “would be quite burdensome and significantly impair our ability to do what we need to do.”

And Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, also offered measured support for “giving the country time” in the way that limited US regulation enabled early internet commerce to flourish.

But this is an about-face from both tech leaders, considering where they stood when they supported implementing sensible guardrails around the technology. Altman testified to Congress two years ago on the need for AI regulation, and Smith praised Microsoft’s home state of Washington for its “significant breakthrough” in passing first-in-the-nation guardrails on the use of facial recognition.