In 2026, states will go head to head with the White House's sweeping executive order. In the final weeks of 2025, the battle over regulating artificial intelligence in the US reached a boiling point. On December 11, after Congress failed twice to pass a law banning state AI laws, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order seeking to handcuff states from regulating the booming industry. Instead, he vowed to work with Congress to establish a "minimally burdensome" national AI policy, one that would position the US to win the global AI race. The move marked a qualified victory for tech titans, who have been marshaling multimillion-dollar war chests to oppose AI regulations, arguing that a patchwork of state laws would stifle innovation. In 2026, the battleground will shift to the courts.

Leading the Future said it will spend millions to keep Alex Bores out of Congress. It might be helping him instead. It turns out that when an AI-friendly super PAC with $100 million in backing from Silicon Valley bigwigs identifies you as its first target, it ends up generating a lot of attention. "I want to thank [the PAC] for their partnership in raising up the issue of how we regulate an incredibly powerful technology so that the future is one that benefits all of us," says Alex Bores, a New York Assembly member and Democratic congressional candidate, in an interview with WIRED. "I couldn't imagine a better partner this week."

A 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation included in President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" has brushed up against a mounting battle over the growth of data centers. On Thursday, Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, posted on X that the megabill's 10-year block on states regulating artificial intelligence could "make it easier for corporations to get zoning variances, so massive AI data centers could be built in close proximity to residential areas." Massie, who did not vote for the bill, followed up his initial tweet with a screenshot of a story on a proposed data center in Oldham County, Kentucky, which downsized and changed locations following local pushback. "This isn't a conspiracy theory; this was a recent issue in my Congressional district," he wrote of concerns over the placement of data centers. "It was resolved at the local level because local officials had leverage. The big beautiful bill undermines the ability of local communities to decide where the AI data centers will be built."

There were plans to include measures to force social media companies to remove some "legal-but-harmful" content in the Online Safety Act, before it became law. But the proposals were scrapped over censorship concerns. Online safety campaigners argue the rules around removing harmful content needed tightening to close loopholes in the act. In January this year, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC he had "inherited an unsatisfactory legislative settlement" in the Online Safety Act. "I'm very open-minded and I've said publicly, I think we'll have to legislate into the future again," Kyle said.

Some of those people are policymakers, who have been trying hard to respond to the problems AI products pose without reducing our ability to harness their power. So at the beginning of this year, my colleagues and I looked around the world for signs of how AI regulations are likely to change this year. We summarized what we found here. In China, one of the major moves to be on the lookout for in 2024 is whether the country will follow in the European Union's footsteps and announce its own comprehensive AI Act. In June of last year, China's top governing body released a list of legislation they were working on.

The European Union is set to thrash out an agreement on sweeping rules to regulate artificial intelligence on Wednesday, following months of difficult negotiations in particular on how to monitor generative AI tools like ChatGPT. The EU is racing to approve the world's first comprehensive AI law after the issue took on greater urgency when the ChatGPT bot burst onto the scene last year and highlighted AI's dizzying advances. ChatGPT wowed with its ability to produce poems and essays within seconds. AI proponents say the technology will benefit humanity, transforming everything from work to health care, but others worry about the risks it poses to society, fearing it could thrust the world into unprecedented chaos.

Center for A.I. Safety Director Dan Hendrycks explains concerns about how the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could impact society. President Biden said Friday that his White House would continue to put out executive actions aimed at regulating and guiding the use of artificial intelligence but also said those actions won't end the need for Congress to pass AI legislation. "These commitments are a promising step, but we have a lot more work to do together," Biden said at the White House as he announced that seven AI development companies would work within a voluntary set of guidelines aimed at creating safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems. "Realizing the promise of AI by managing the risks is going to require new laws, regulations and oversight," Biden added. "In the weeks ahead, I'm going to continue to take executive action and help America lead the way to responsible innovation."

Is the OpenAI bug bounty for ChatGPT all that it could be, some wonder. I'm sure that you've heard that oft-repeated sage advice. The same utterance has been smarmily used to describe the recently announced Bug Bounty initiative that OpenAI has proclaimed for ChatGPT and their other AI apps such as GPT-4 (successor to ChatGPT). In essence, the skeptics and cynics are suggesting that their Bug Bounty is not up to par and misses the boat in a variety of crucial ways. It misses the devout mark. Time to take this one home. You see, some carp that it undershoots what could have been a much more robust and momentous proclamation aiming to curtail AI-related woes. Not everyone sees things as quite so dismally about the announcement. You might have thought that proffering a bug bounty effort would be appreciated and applauded.

China has released a new draft regulation that it says is necessary to ensure the safe development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as ChatGPT. While it supports the innovative use of AI algorithms to improve user experience and access to information, the growth of such applications can lead to abuse. Emphasis should be placed on such tools and data resources to be used safely and reliably, said the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). Regulations were needed to drive a healthy and sustainable development of generative AI algorithms, said the government agency, as it published the draft laws on its website. Under the proposed rules, operators will be required to send their applications to regulators for "safety reviews" before offering the services to the public, according to a report by state-owned media Global Times.

When we sit and work on legislation, I wonder whether the legislation alone would deliver the results we're hoping it will deliver, particularly when we look at competitors, such as China and the US,