Attorney General Jeff Jackson Pushes Congress to Establish Federal Regulations for Artificial Intelligence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, September 25, 2026
Contact: comms@ncdoj.gov
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RALEIGH — Attorney General Jeff Jackson and a bipartisan coalition of 25 other attorneys general are pushing Congress to take immediate action to regulate artificial intelligence, a call that’s been echoed by AI industry leaders in recent weeks.

“AI technology is developing fast, and we can’t let it go unchecked,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “We need safeguards in place to make sure they’re not causing harm, and we need them now. States are already working on this, and we need Congress to step up.”

Attorney General Jackson and the coalition sent a letter to congressional leaders urging them to immediately establish comprehensive federal regulations and safety protocols for AI. The letter points to recent AI safety incidents and notes that unchecked AI could threaten the country’s financial system, critical infrastructure, and national security. While states are working to hold AI labs accountable under their existing laws, federal oversight is necessary.

On July 16, Hugging Face, an open-source library and repository, reported that it was being attacked by an unknown third party. Within a week, OpenAI admitted that the attack was waged by its AI agents, which escaped a testing environment and infiltrated Hugging Face using stolen credentials. OpenAI was aware of the agents’ capabilities and failed to monitor their activity or stop their exploits. The agents’ actions, if perpetrated by a human, would have constituted criminal conduct.

Following the Hugging Face incident, Anthropic and Meta also acknowledged their AI agents had entered the open web and performed dangerous and unlawful actions. This agent behavior has been known to the industry for years and is a direct result of their training. Through a practice called “reinforcement learning,” AI labs reward models’ achievement of goals and penalize unsuccessful attempts, leading models to take reckless measures to complete the tasks they are given.

At a minimum, the attorneys general are urging Congress to ensure AI model development moves at an intentional pace, incorporates safety and transparency, and avoids consolidating market power. Specifically, they say the effort to regulate AI must include:

1. Mandatory federal oversight of safety testing and standards. This effort should be led by AI model safety experts who are selected by federal regulators and should be supported by consistent performance benchmarks.
2. A transparent and consistent government-led incident response. Investigators should have direct access to books and records, with public findings that allow the industry to quickly evolve in response.
3. Mandatory safety infrastructure and experienced leaders who can make safety decisions unburdened by profit maximization.  
4. International cooperation on the speed of AI development and the prevention of developing harmful superintelligence.  
5. Safeguards that ensure government regulation doesn’t undermine competition or allow companies to evade existing antitrust laws.
6. An explicit protection of existing state laws so that federal regulations don’t preempt them. State officials should be granted full authority to enforce federal protections.

Attorney General Jeff Jackson leads the nationwide bipartisan AI Task Force along with Utah Attorney General Derek Brown. The task force is focused on identifying emerging AI issues, developing safeguards to protect the public, especially children, and creating a standing forum to track AI developments and coordinate responses.

He has also taken other steps to protect people from AI technology abuses. In January, he led a bipartisan coalition of 35 attorneys general demanding that xAI stop its chatbot, Grok, from generating nonconsensual sexual images and remove any remaining images. In 2025, he demanded that tech companies protect kids from predatory artificial intelligence products and demanded that search engines, banks, and payment platforms take stronger steps against deepfake nonconsensual intimate imagery. He was also part of a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general that successfully blocked Congress’ attempt to impose a moratorium that would prevent states from enforcing AI laws.

Attorney General Jackson is joined in sending the letter to congressional leaders by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and American Samoa

A copy of the letter is available here.

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