The US Government across the state and federal level continue to grapple with what laws or regulations are required to address safety concerns as well as how to treat synthetic media. With the federal government concerned about slowing the pace of the AI boom what's starting to emerge is a patchwork of regulations at the state level that's creating a fragmented regulatory regime for synthetic media and the AI industry as a whole.
The furor over increased safety risk posed from generative AI is picking up and the Trump administration, which continues to push for a light touch regulatory regime is announcing an "AI Force" and a new AI Czar to replace David Sacks, the prominent venture capitalist who runs Craft Ventures.
States on the other hand continue to push new regulations with California passing laws endorsed by Anthropic and OpenAI to integrate outside auditors into frontier model labs as well as a framework for assessing what qualifies a third party to assess AI safety risk.
For generative media, existing laws are being put to the test: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the seizure of celebrity deepfake websites, while a federal judge blocked Vermont's attempt to enforce its synthetic-media law against one satirical AI-generated video on First Amendment grounds.
For Hollywood, calls to regulate more aggressively have been published but so far there continues to be no serious policy response save for a new 15 Million pilot program to retrain new workers in generative AI.
