The U.S. Senate decision this week not to interfere with state artificial intelligence regulations defeated a 10-year moratorium on such laws that had earlier cleared the House and alarmed California officials.
The 99-1 vote to strip the moratorium from the president’s “big, beautiful” budget bill followed opposition from a handful of Republicans. Dissenting from GOP colleagues, they argued the measure would allow the proliferation of highly realistic, AI-enabled “deepfake” impersonation videos, endanger jobs and infringe on the rights of state governments.
The budget bill was approved 51-50 by the Senate, thanks to Vice President J.D. Vance’s tie-breaking vote. The Senate decision to remove the AI regulation spared it a tense debate with the Housse.
The small rebellion was enough to seal the moratorium’s fate, given Republicans’ slim majority in the Senate and united opposition from Democrats.
“Federalism is preserved and humans are safe for now,” one of the Republican dissenters, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, wrote following the vote.
In California, the moratorium would have threatened 20 AI laws on the books and 30 more proposals that are before the Legislature. State officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta and the executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, came out against the measure.
Some 43 states have enacted 131 AI regulations since 2016, according to Stanford researchers.
California state Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from Menlo Park who authored an AI disclosure law, said he was encouraged that Congress “came to its senses.”
“This decision preserves California’s ability to lead on consumer privacy and protections while cultivating the responsible development of AI that serves the public interest,” he wrote in an email message. “In the absence of a strong federal standard, states must retain the flexibility to advance AI in ways that do not compromise safety, privacy, or the rights of our residents.”
Key to the moratorium’s defeat was pressure from a wide range of advocacy groups, said Ben Winters of the Consumer Federation of America. Organizations ranging from the Teamsters to the NAACP to the National Association of Evangelicals opposed the measure.
“The tech lobby attempted to manipulate the legislative process, but they were soundly defeated,” Winters wrote. “This outcome sends a clear signal that special interest groups cannot simply override public concerns with backroom deals, and that everyday people can successfully challenge corporate overreach.”
Prior to its defeat, the moratorium had already been watered down in the Senate, reduced in duration to five years and in scope to states that wanted access to $500 million in new federal funding for AI infrastructure and broadband deployment.
The battle over the measure underlined the bipartisan nature of concern around AI.
“This is how you take on big tech!” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, wrote on social media after the Senate vote.
Ryan Tate is a reporter with CalMatters.
