3 days ago
Oklahoma AG signs letter critical of congressional efforts to prohibit AI state regulation
The entrance to the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office pictured on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Janelle Stecklein/Oklahoma Voice)
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma's attorney general is pushing back on a congressional effort to bar states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond is one of a bipartisan coalition of 40 attorneys general who signed a letter from the National Association of Attorneys General in opposition to an amendment in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that bans state action on the issue.
Drummond signed the letter opposing the Republican-led bill because there is no proposed federal regulatory framework to regulate artificial intelligence, said Leslie Berger, his spokesperson.
'Congress should not preclude states from enacting laws on the subject unless Congress itself enacts its own laws,' Berger said in a statement.
'The impact of such a broad moratorium would be sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI,' according to the letter.
States have passed their own regulations to address the harms associated with artificial intelligence such as prohibitions against AI-generated explicit materials, data privacy and protections for renters against using algorithms to establish rent, according to the letter.
Oklahoma lawmakers have also launched efforts to regulate the growing use of artificial intelligence.
House Bill 3453 attempts to define artificial intelligence and requires that Oklahomans be informed when they are interacting with AI. The bill passed out of the Oklahoma House, but stalled in the Senate.
Lawmakers proposed other measures tackling AI usage include prohibiting spreading information using deepfake media within 90 days of an election and health care insurance providers, which would require insurers to disclose the use of AI based algorithms in their review process. They did not advance through the Senate.
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