US unveils AI policy framework to protect children, creators and free speech
The White House published a new artificial intelligence (AI) policy framework, comprised of seven pillars of responsible practice that the Trump administration is seeking to recommend to Congress.
The key pillars of the National Policy Framework for AI include the protection of children and empowerment of parents, the safety and strengthening of “American communities”, respect for intellectual property rights, prevention of censorship and protection of free speech, enabling innovation and “American AI dominance”, educating Americans to develop an AI-ready national workforce, and the establishment of a federal policy framework to pre-empt “cumbersome state laws”.
Alongside these seven pillars, the framework also urged Congress to establish “sandboxes for AI applications that help unleash American ingenuity and further American leadership in AI development and deployment”.
It also set out that “appropriate agencies within the national security enterprise” should be supplied with “sufficient technical capacity to understand frontier AI model capabilities and any associated national security considerations”, with efforts to establish plans to mitigate potential concerns, including through consultation with frontier AI model developers.
Congress was also urged to provide “resources to make federal datasets accessible to industry and academia” and to “support development and deployment of sector-specific AI applications through existing regulatory bodies”. The framework meanwhile discouraged legislators from creating a “new federal rulemaking body” to regulate the technology.
On 24 March, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reacted to the publication of the framework, saying it welcomed its recommendations and would work to advance technical AI expertise and capability “across the intelligence community”, using AI tools to “assess risks and stay ahead of our foreign adversaries”.
“President Trump’s new AI framework makes it clear: understanding frontier AI capabilities is a national security, American First imperative,” it said.
The new framework follows on from the US AI Action Plan, which was published in July last year. The plan promised to usher in what it called “a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people”.
In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order entitled ‘Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence’, which called for America to “retain dominance in [the] global race”, and eventually led to the creation of the action plan.
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Child protection priorities
A primary pillar of the framework addressed the need for legislation to protect children from graphic or sexually exploitative AI-generated content.
It said that the US Congress should provide “robust tools” to parents and guardians to “manage their children’s privacy settings, screen time, content exposure, and account controls”, as well as set “commercially reasonable, privacy protective, age assurance requirements… for AI platforms and services likely to be accessed by minors”.
It warned against Congress setting “ambiguous standards” around permissible content, or what it termed “open-ended liability” that it said risked “excessive litigation”.
“Congress should ensure that it does not pre-empt states from enforcing their own generally applicable laws protecting children, such as prohibitions on child sexual abuse material, even where such material is generated by AI,” it said.
Copyright and free speech protection
The framework also underscored the need for Congress to develop licensing laws for collective rights holders in America.
Such laws it said would enable creators to “negotiate compensation for their likeness or content being used in AI”. Cases might include “AI-generated digital replicas of [a creator’s] voice, likeness, or other identifiable attributes”.
However, the framework said that exceptions would be made for “parody, satire, news reporting, and other expressive works protected by the [free speech principles in the] First Amendment”, such as copyright laws could be used to “stifle free speech online”.
Though the framework stressed that the Trump administration did not consider “training of AI models on copyrighted material” a violation of copyright laws, it called for the courts to resolve contrary views on the issue. Finally, it warned that “Congress should not take any actions that would impact the judiciary’s resolution of whether training on copyrighted material constitutes fair use”.
Energy demands
The energy expenditure needed to power US data centres was also raised in the framework, which called for permitting reforms to enable “AI infrastructure construction and operation” at scale.
It said that such reforms would allow AI developers to develop or procure “on-site and behind-the-meter power generation to accelerate AI infrastructure buildout and enhance grid reliability”.
It added that offsets to increased electricity prices would also be required to protect nearby residents as the data centres were being built.
In his State of the Union address in February this year, Trump laid out his intention of getting major tech firms to agree to take on some of the costs uncured through the expected surges in energy costs.
Acknowledging that the country’s current grid infrastructure was not sufficient to take on future electricity demands, Trump said tech firms had an obligation “to provide for their own power needs”.
He added: “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory so that no one’s prices will go up, and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down.”
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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