Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Commending Efforts To Advance Vital Bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Legislation In The Senate

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on recent Senate efforts that mark important progress on AI legislation. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

It’s been two months since the Bipartisan AI Working Group I formed with Senator Heinrich, Democrat, and Senators Young and Rounds, Republican, published our Roadmap for AI Policy. I’m happy to report that the Senate is making important progress on drafting AI legislation already.

Just yesterday, under the leadership of Chair Cantwell and Chair Peters, both the Commerce Homeland Security Committees marked up and approved important bipartisan AI bills. These bills will help American workers to be AI-ready, while helping innovation lead the way in new technologies. 

Yesterday, Senator Klobuchar also brought two bipartisan bills to the floor to protect our elections from deep fakes in political advertising. Sadly these bills were blocked but I hope we can find a path forward.

And last week, the Senate unanimously passed the DEFIANCE Act, a bill to combat the spread of sexually explicit AI-generated deepfakes, an awful thing that’s afflicting so many Americans, particularly young kids and young girls in particular.

So, in just the last two weeks, there are at least five very good AI bills that have seen some movement in the Senate. All of them have bipartisan support. Together they represent a good mix of the two approaches I’ve always said we need with AI: to promote safe innovation on the one hand, but instill commonsense guardrails on the other.

This is the recipe for strong AI legislation: safe innovation, strong innovation, balanced with sound guardrails.

And I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working together. I look forward to more of this in the weeks to come.

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