Big beautiful AI rule means feds must act NOW to stop Big Techs abuses

Deep within President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — the major spending legislation he wants to see by July 4 — is a rule that holds enormous implications for the rapidly developing artificial intelligence sector.The Senate is debating a provision that would prevent state governments from regulating the AI industry for years.Supporters claim this moratorium would stop a patchwork of conflicting state laws from slowing AI’s rocketing development.But without subsequent federal action, a moratorium on state regulation risks making the AI industry a law-free zone, where Big Tech companies can essentially do whatever they want with an untested, sometimes exploitative new technology.We’ve needed federal regulation on AI companies for some time, but if this new moratorium passes, it will become even more urgent for Congress to act.If the AI industry is going to grow sustainably and responsibly, we need legislation to provide guardrails and clear rules about how to protect the creators of content that AI tools use — publishers, authors, journalists, artists, musicians and creatives of all types.Right now, those content creators are AI’s victims.Big Tech and AI companies scrape vast amounts of content to build and operate their generative AI products, which turn content into GenAI outputs for users.Sometimes they just reproduce content creators’ passages word for word — without credit or compensation.AI companies admit these unfair and un-American tactics are fundamental to their businesses, but they refuse to pay because it’s cheaper to steal.Even worse, this predatory behavior lets AI models act as information gatekeepers.If Big Tech is left to its own devices, Americans will have less access to accurate information, and certainly no one to hold accountable for errors and mistakes.Reporting on stories that Americans need to know will dwindle as the AI companies undermine the business models of publishers, opening the door to viewpoint supp...