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.
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