Regulating AI and determining who should oversee it has become a major focus of the current administration. On July 23, 2025, President Trump issued three significant Executive Orders related to AI alongside the release of Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan. Together, these initiatives outline four primary policy objectives:

• Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
• Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expedite and modernize permitting for data centers and semiconductor fabrication, as well as create new national initiatives to increase employment in high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
• Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Remove onerous federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment and seek private sector input on rules that will facilitate the removal.
• Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Update federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.

From an HR perspective, the administration is taking a light regulatory approach toward the AI industry while also directing federal agencies to prioritize factual accuracy and ideological neutrality in responses generated by large language models (LLMs).

In recognition of the growing jurisdictions that are imposing AI regulatory framework, in December 2025, the president signed an executive order that prohibited states from regulating AI.  Four states — Colorado, California, Utah, and Texas — have passed laws that set some rules for AI across the private sector, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals.  Unfortunately, this executive order cannot impact the states’ regulatory powers except that the administration could withhold monies if the states try to regulate AI. 

Recognizing the limitations of the EOs, the administration just issued A National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence as a map for congress to pass laws that would override the growing patchwork of state and local jurisdictional AI laws.  Colorado, in particular, enacted a stringent law regulating the implementation of AI systems, although enforcement is currently on hold.

From an HR standpoint, the AI regulations that are currently required mostly concern notice to applicants and employees. Although the Mobley v. Workday, Inc. case filed in the federal court in San Francisco concerns the discriminatory application of AI, it is still ongoing with many turns and curves.  Although it started as an AI case, it is turning into an age discrimination class action lawsuit.  For example, it is still unclear as to who is making decisions regarding applicants, especially when decisions seemingly are made at 1:00 a.m. or so.  Second, there is a lack of clarity of how the AI model learns, as age discrimination started becoming an issue.  Mobley’s email was a Hotmail address, and that email may be indicative how the AI model learned the age of the applicant, especially for IT companies that focus on youth. 

So the A National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence framework directs congress to take action in eight areas of regulatory opportunities.  Specifically, it calls on congress to:

• “Provide AI resources to small businesses — such as grants, tax incentives, and technical assistance programs — to support wider deployment of AI;
• Consider enabling copyrights holders to collectively negotiate compensation from AI providers, without incurring antitrust liability;
• Augment existing law enforcement efforts to combat AI-enabled impersonation scams and fraud; and
• Consider establishing a federal framework protecting individuals from the unauthorized distribution or commercial use of AI-generated “digital replicas of their voice, likeness, or other identifiable attributes, while providing clear exceptions for parody, satire, news reporting, and other expressive works protected by the First Amendment.”

And most importantly, preempt state AI laws that “impose undue burdens to ensure a minimally burdensome national standard,” while respecting “key principles of federalism.”

The administration is focused on the minimal but necessary oversight of AI in its race with rivals, in particular China, to dominate the AI industry and its outputs to the global economy.  President Trump stated last December that:

 “There’s only going to be one winner as nations race to dominate artificial intelligence, and China’s central government gives its companies a single place to go for government approvals. We have the big investment coming, but if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you can forget it because it’s impossible to do.”

With Congress as divided as ever, it's hard to say whether any of this actually becomes law — even though there's plenty here that both sides could get behind, from keeping kids safe to protecting creators' copyrights. Almost everyone agrees that AI needs some kind of regulation. The hard part is figuring out how to do it without pulling the plug on one of the fastest-moving industries we've ever seen.

Source: HR Dive 3/20/26, AP 12/12/25, National Law Review 7/29/25