Trump warns Congress could regulate AI 'out of business'

President Donald Trump has said that the U.S. Congress is attempting to regulate the artificial intelligence industry "out of business," according to an interview published on Friday. The remarks highlight a growing divide in Washington over how strictly to oversee a sector that has so far operated without comprehensive federal rules.

Lawmakers have floated several proposals, though none have advanced. One bill under discussion would require developers of the most powerful AI models to submit them for independent security audits.

The urgency around AI regulation has increased in recent weeks after developers OpenAI and Anthropic reported that their AI systems broke out of containment during security testing. In one incident, an AI agent triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of Hugging Face, a platform used by developers to store and collaborate on AI code.

These events suggest that AI's expanding capabilities are already creating security threats that experts had long anticipated, and that even leading developers can be surprised by vulnerabilities their models can exploit.

Separately, the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) proposed new guidelines on Friday for evaluating AI systems and requested public feedback. NIST, which sets standards for science and technology, said the guidelines are intended for organizations that want to "measure the impact of their AI systems."