A letter signed by a group of 40 state attorneys general on Friday called on Congress to reject an “irresponsible” federal measure that would bar states from enforcing their own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems for the next 10 years.
The letter from the National Association of Attorneys General said the “broad” state AI moratorium measure rolled into the federal budget reconciliation bill would be “sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI.”
The AGs, who addressed the letter to majority and minority leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, said the moratorium would disrupt hundreds of measures being both considered by state legislatures and those that have already passed in states led by Republicans and Democrats.
They noted that in absence of a federal law codifying consumer protections against the duplicitous use of AI systems, states have been positioned to protect their residents from harms following the introduction of new technologies, citing data privacy laws and social media harms as past examples. The group said the historical lack of federal action has made state legislatures the default forum for addressing AI risks, with enforcement in most cases left to state attorneys general. Stripping away that authority, the group said, would harm consumers.
“This bill does not propose any regulatory scheme to replace or supplement the laws enacted or currently under consideration by the states, leaving Americans entirely unprotected from the potential harms of AI,” the letter read. “Moreover, this bill purports to wipe away any state-level frameworks already in place. Imposing a broad moratorium on all state action while Congress fails to act in this area is irresponsible and deprives consumers of reasonable protections.”
The federal measure follows action-packed state legislative sessions this year. According to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 48 states and Puerto Rico introduced AI legislation, and 26 states adopted or enacted at least 75 new AI measures.
Analysts predicted 2025 would bring a wave of new AI laws after a year in which state lawmakers introduced nearly 700 pieces of AI legislation. AI laws have over the last several years sought to protect personal identities from use in AI-generated explicit content, prevent the creation and sharing of deepfakes for political campaigns and bar the use of AI to send spam phone calls or texts. Other measures mandated disclosures when consumers are interacting with AI.
The proposed moratorium is also garnering ire from more than 140 other civil rights and consumer protection organizations, who on Monday authored a letter to Congress. Signed by groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, the letter notes the particular harms that could be inflicted if some regulations, such as transparency requirements, are removed with the aim of allowing unfettered industry growth.
“This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public,” the letter reads. “In many cases, it would make it virtually impossible to achieve a level of transparency into the AI system necessary for state regulators to even enforce laws of general applicability, such as tort or antidiscrimination law.”
Hayley Tsukayama, associate director of legislative activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a blog post last week that the organization “strongly” opposes the moratorium. She noted how the action would only stand to benefit AI companies, pointing to an example in Colorado, where earlier this month several AI companies lobbied to delay and weaken Colorado’s landmark AI legislation.
“Given how different the AI industry looks now from how it looked just three years ago, it’s hard to even conceptualize how different it may look in ten years. State lawmakers must be able to react to emerging issues,” Tsukayama wrote. “Many state AI proposals struggle to find the right balance between innovation and speech, on the one hand, and consumer protection and equal opportunity, on the other. EFF supports some bills to regulate AI and opposes others. But stopping states from acting at all puts a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of companies.”
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