Developing or Using Artificial Intelligence? Fear not! We’re from the Government and We’re Here to Help.

This Beltway Bulletin was published in the Fall 2025 issue of The Federal Lawyer.

By Cissy Jackson

In June of this year, 99 U.S. senators voted not to impose a moratorium on state artificial intelligence (AI) regulations as part of the massive budget reconciliation bill. A survey of those senators might uncover 99 different reasons for their votes, but the inescapable consequence of all those votes is that the development and use of AI will continue to be regulated in different ways by a variety of jurisdictions across the United States. Indeed, several states already have enacted laws regulating AI, and legislation is in process in several others.1

Meanwhile, Congress will continue to wrestle with issues related to AI regulation, including concerns about patchwork regulation by the states that would have been addressed by the proposed—but failed—moratorium. Based on contacts with key committees and our monitoring of relevant litigation, we expect to see more discussion about “fair use”—in other words, whether AI platforms can legally “scrape” publicly available websites, books, audio, songs, and other materials that may or may not be copyrighted to use in training their AI models. We also expect more focus on AI’s resource demands, in terms of energy sourcing—whether renewable, nonrenewable, or “all of the above”—and in terms of emissions and risks to human health. Additionally, there may be competition for those resources from communities, farms, and other industries. Privacy and intellectual property rights issues also are likely to generate more attention, and concerns about fairness, authenticity, cybersecurity, and deception are unlikely to go away as the use of AI becomes increasingly widespread.

Both the House and Senate boast robust bipartisan participation in AI Caucuses,2 and in 2024, both chambers produced extensive task force reports, which were intended to serve as roadmaps for future legislative agendas. In a May 15, 2024, report entitled, “Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence,”3 the Senate AI Working Group agreed on several priority areas for AI policy development, including supporting U.S. innovation in AI; AI and the workforce; high impact uses of AI; elections and democracy; privacy and liability; transparency, explainability, intellectual property, and copyright; safeguarding against AI risks; and national security.

A few months later, the Bipartisan House Task Force “Report on Artificial Intelligence”4 made key findings and offered recommendations for policy development in many of the same areas identified in the Senate report. Chapters in the House report address government use; federal preemption; data privacy; national security; research, development, and standards; civil rights and civil liberties; education and workforce; intellectual property; content authenticity; open and closed systems; energy usage and data centers; small business; agriculture; healthcare; and financial services.

As noted in both Congressional reports, there is tension between the impulse to mitigate risk and a sense of urgency driven by competition with China for AI superiority. The challenge for Members of Congress, therefore, is to reconcile these opposing forces in effectively addressing high priority regulatory issues.

While the Biden Administration leaned more heavily into risk mitigation, the Trump Administration prioritizes winning the AI arms race. Indeed, within hours of his inauguration, President Trump began pursuing his campaign promise to “unchain” American business and innovation by reducing government regulation and incentivizing domestic investment across a number of sectors, including the development and use of AI. First, he revoked President Biden’s 2023 AI Executive Order,5 which set forth a government-wide framework intended to guide the safe and responsible development and use of AI. Three days later, Trump issued his own AI Executive Order entitled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” 6 which officially shifted the executive branch’s focus from managing risk to ensuring global AI dominance. Subsequent guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), however, reveals significant areas of continuity in federal AI policy, including an emphasis on ensuring trustworthiness.7

The Trump Administration is already leveraging new AI tools in a number of agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has begun using a large language model (LLM) called Elsa to accelerate clinical protocol reviews and scientific evaluations and to identify high-priority inspection targets. According to the FDA’s press release,8 as the tool matures, the agency intends to integrate Elsa into other activities where it can improve operational efficiency and support the agency’s mission.

Also in the healthcare arena, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have invited companies with AI expertise to apply to participate in CMS’ new Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model. The agency plans to combine AI and machine learning with human clinical review in an effort to improve Medicare’s prior authorization process. Congress will certainly exercise its oversight authority as these programs are implemented and we may see legislative proposals to address concerns about privacy or bias, which often are raised when AI is considered or used in healthcare settings.9

Although the Congressional task force reports offer broad, high-level recommendations for policy development, they do not delve into specifics. In the first six months of this year, at least eight Congressional committees convened hearings to consider some of the topics covered in the reports. For example, witnesses testified about the relationship between trade secrets and the “global AI arms race;” the AI posture of the Defense Department; AI and cybersecurity; the impacts of AI on intellectual property and the internet; the impacts of AI on K-12 education; current and future uses of AI in communications and technology; the economics of AI, data centers, and power consumption; and deepfakes. Because issues involving AI fit within the jurisdiction of more than two dozen Congressional Committees, look for more hearings on AI topics in the coming months.

According to one tally,10 as of mid-June, members of Congress had introduced a total of 22 bills relating to the use of AI, and this number is likely to grow. Several of these early bills, one of which became law,11 target nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images or pornography generated using AI. A number of other bills address the establishment of standards and requirements for government procurement and use of AI, one bill would protect whistleblowers who raise AI security vulnerabilities or violations, and one bill would prohibit the use of deceptive AI-generated audio or visual media in federal elections. With the majority of the task forces’ recommendations not yet addressed and with 100 members having demonstrated interest by joining either the House or Senate AI Caucus, we expect more members to introduce legislation to elevate their particular priorities and to distinguish themselves from their colleagues as we move toward the midterm elections in 2026.

 

Endnotes

1 https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/artificialintelligence-

2025-legislation

2 See https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/artificial-intelligence-caucus;

https://artificialintelligencecaucus-beyer.house.gov/

3 https://www.schumer.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Roadmap_

Electronic1.32pm.pdf

4 https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/a/a/aa2ee12f-

8f0c-46a3-8ff8-8e4215d6a72b/6676530F7A30F243A24E254F685823

3A.ai-task-force-report-final.pdf

5 https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidentialactions/

2023/10/30/executive-order-on-the-safe-secure-andtrustworthy-

development-and-use-of-artificial-intelligence/

6 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/

removing-barriers-to-american-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence/.

7 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-omb-memos-signalcontinuity-

in-federal-ai-policy/

8 https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fdalaunches-

agency-wide-ai-tool-optimize-performance-americanpeople

9 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10718098/; https://

www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2024/24_0245.htm

10 https://advance.lexis.com/open/document/openwebdocview/

Artificial-Intelligence-Legislation-Tracker-2025-/?pdmfid=10

00522&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fanalytic

al-materials%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A6DX9-9793-S4KX-F2JG-

00000-00&pdcomponentid=500749#. We note that this list is does

not include every AI-related bill introduced this Congress. For

example, S. 146, the “Take It Down Act,” which became law on May

19, 2025, is not on this list, though it criminalizes the nonconsensual

publication of intimate images including deepfakes. Also not

included is H.R. 1283, the Protecting Our Children in an AI World

Act of 2025, which prohibits child pornography produced using

artificial intelligence. As is the case with any digital search, the results

depend on the searcher’s focus and how the search is crafted.

11 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146