[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 126 (Thursday, August 1, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5720-S5721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Artificial Intelligence

  Mr. President, now on AI, or artificial intelligence, it has been 2 
months since the Bipartisan AI Working Group I formed with Senator 
Heinrich, Democrat, and Senators Young and Rounds, Republican, 
published our roadmap for

[[Page S5721]]

AI policy. I am happy to report that the Senate is making important 
progress on drafting AI legislation already.
  Just yesterday, under the magnificent leadership of Chair Cantwell 
and Chair Peters, both the Commerce and 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 deepfakes 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 is inflicting so many Americans, particularly, 
young kids and young girls, in particular.
  So in the last 2 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 
have always said we need with AI two things: 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 and look forward to 
more of this in the weeks to come.