WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday proposed a sweeping national standard on artificial intelligence that seeks to make good on President Donald Trump’s call for a federal law in lieu of state regulations.

Blackburn, R-Tenn., released a discussion draft bill and summary of her AI framework legislation, which would place a “duty of care” requirement on AI developers and sunset protections for hosts of user-generated content online, alongside other new requirements.

Blackburn, who is running for governor of her home state, has been a critic of social media platforms and of suggestions by Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others to limit state regulation of AI without a federal law.

The nearly 300-page bill, dubbed the “Trump America AI Act,” incorporates proposals from Blackburn and her colleagues on both sides of the aisle related to artificial intelligence and the internet. She previewed the plan in December but without legislative text.

It has not yet been introduced and referred to a committee, but the bill could fall under the jurisdiction of multiple panels. The bills it incorporates have generally not received markups so far this Congress.

In a statement, Blackburn said the bill would support Trump’s December executive order on state AI laws, which called for lawsuits against states for their AI laws and for members of the Trump administration to develop a national standard for Congress to take up.

“Instead of pushing AI amnesty, President Trump rightfully called on Congress to pass federal standards and protections to solve the patchwork of state laws that has hindered AI innovation. Now, Congress must answer his call to establish one federal rulebook for AI to protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities across the country and ensure America triumphs over foreign adversaries in the global race for AI dominance,” Blackburn said.

Earlier in the day at a Commerce Committee hearing on Section 230 of the 1996 communications law, she said, “The president asked me to take a shot at drafting this as just a guideline as to where we start on the discussion about a framework for AI.”

A White House spokesperson did not directly address her proposal Wednesday. “We continue to have productive conversations with legislators as we work with Congress towards delivering national AI legislation, as directed in the President’s Executive Order,” they said by email.

Chatbots, online speech

The draft bill would require AI chatbot developers to “exercise reasonable care” in designing and operating their systems to prevent and mitigate “reasonably foreseeable” harms to users.

It would also incorporate legislation from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would sunset liability protections for online platforms under Section 230 two years after enactment. Section 230 became the foundation for all platforms that host user-generated content but has come under fire for providing what critics say is an overbroad shield for large tech companies.

It also includes the text of a bill Blackburn sponsored that would create a duty of care for online platforms to prevent harms to minors, known as the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently forwarded a modified version of that legislation as part of a larger package, which would require platforms to put policies in place to prevent a more limited list of harms and does not include a duty of care.

Music, likeness provisions

The Blackburn bill also includes protections for artists, an issue of particular interest to her constituents in Nashville’s music industry.

It takes the text of a bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., that would give individuals a right to license their voice and visual likeness for digital replicas and prohibit transmitting such replicas without consent.

It also includes legislation sponsored by Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., that would allow copyright holders to request subpoenas to help determine whether their work was used to train an AI model. It would specify that derivative works created by AI are not eligible for fair use copyright exemptions or for their own copyright protections.

The framework brings together a number of proposals that would attempt to evaluate and mitigate the effects of artificial intelligence.

It would require publicly traded companies and federal agencies to report quarterly on hiring and layoffs related to AI, incorporating legislation introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in November.

The legislation also incorporates another Hawley-sponsored bill that would ban AI companion chatbots for kids, create criminal penalties for companies allowing chatbots to engage in sexually explicit conversations with kids and require companies that run AI chatbots to verify users’ ages.

To address concerns about the risks of “advanced” AI systems, the bill would incorporate a bill Hawley sponsored that would require the Department of Energy to establish a program to evaluate the risks of adverse AI incidents like loss of control.

It would also incorporate legislation by Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., co-sponsored by Hawley, that would classify AI systems as products and allow users or the government to bring lawsuits for property damage, mental anguish, death, illness and financial injury.

Other provisions of Blackburn’s framework would codify the Center for AI Standards and Innovation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource within the National Science Foundation.

The bill would require providers of “high-risk” artificial intelligence systems to subject those systems to third-party audits to look for viewpoint or political affiliation discrimination. It also would require the Energy Department to enter into agreements with data center companies to protect ratepayers from higher electricity prices.

It would also incorporate legislation sponsored by Commerce ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would require the development of content provenance standards to help detect AI-generated content and codify a July executive order regulating the federal government’s procurement of large language models and requiring that they be politically unbiased.

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