Silicon Valley's biggest companies are making what The Verge describes as a "desperate last push" to influence federal artificial intelligence regulation, with Washington lobbyists racing against a shrinking political window as midterm elections approach.
According to The Verge, the effort has taken an unexpected turn: the White House is floating a strategy that would bundle AI policy together with child online safety legislation — a move the outlet characterizes as a "shotgun marriage between child safety and AI boosters." The child safety bill in question appears tied to KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, which has separately drawn significant attention from lawmakers.
For months, The Verge reports, Big Tech's Washington representatives have pursued what it calls the "holy grail of pro-AI" legislation — a federal framework that, from the industry's perspective, would ideally set national standards and limit a patchwork of stricter state-level rules.
The pairing of AI regulation with child safety is a notable political maneuver. Child protection is one of the few issues that commands broad bipartisan support in Congress, and attaching AI provisions to such a bill could give tech-friendly language a clearer path to passage.
The stakes are high: whoever writes the first major federal AI law will effectively set the terms for how the technology is developed, deployed, and policed in the United States for years to come — making this lobbying sprint one of the most consequential in recent tech-policy history.