Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Elon Musk’s xAI has filed a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s landmark AI bill as the Trump administration and leading industry players try to stop US states from regulating the technology.
Colorado’s bill, set to take effect in the summer, was the first state-level initiative passed to impose protections against “algorithmic discrimination” in AI systems.
Musk’s AI lab, which recently merged with rocket group SpaceX, says the bill would force it to “promote the state’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular” rather than its own “disinterested pursuit of truth”.
The lawsuit is the latest move in a battle between AI companies, President Donald Trump’s administration and individual states over regulation of the burgeoning technology.
AI start-ups have pushed back against efforts to impose guardrails in California and New York, and Trump’s AI advisers made clear they wanted the federal government to control regulation with a light-touch national framework.
Musk’s company, known for its model Grok, claims Colorado’s bill would violate First Amendment free speech protections.
“Its provisions prohibit developers of AI systems from producing speech that the State of Colorado dislikes, while compelling them to conform their speech to a state-enforced orthodoxy on controversial topics of great public concern,” according to a filing in federal court on Thursday.
The law “severely burdens the development and use of AI” and would “embed the State’s preferred views into the very fabric of AI systems”, xAI said in the filing.
The Colorado attorney-general’s office declined to comment on the litigation.
The state in 2024 became the first to pass a comprehensive bill regulating artificial intelligence, aiming to prevent AI discrimination in areas including education, employment, lending, healthcare and housing.
The bill requires developers to avoid “algorithmic discrimination”, inform the state attorney-general of “foreseeable risks” and give the consumer the opportunity to both “correct any incorrect personal data” and “appeal an adverse consequential decision”.
The xAI civil claim challenges the bill’s definition of “algorithmic discrimination”, which specifies that it does not include efforts “to increase diversity or redress historical discrimination”.
Recommended
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed the bill “with reservations” and has urged state legislators to amend it. The legislation was supposed to go into effect in February but has been postponed to June to give negotiators more time.
In December, Trump signed an executive order urging the US Congress to pass “a minimally burdensome national standard” on AI instead of “a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups”.
The president’s order singled out Colorado’s law, arguing that the law “may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a ‘differential treatment or impact’ on protected groups”.
Congress has pushed back on efforts to ban states from regulating AI models.
Be the first to comment