Senate Democrats press Trump administration on access to advanced AI models

Senate Senate Democrats press Trump administration on access to advanced AI models Comments: by Mira Bhakta - 08/04/26 2:35 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Mira Bhakta - 08/04/26 2:35 PM ET Comments: Link copied

NOW PLAYING

A group of Senate Democrats is pressing the Trump administration for answers about its policies surrounding American AI models following controversial decisions on AI regulations.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) on Monday wrote a letter requesting Trump administration officials to explain “the Administration’s current policy and approach to limiting access to advanced AI models.”

This comes after Anthropic was forced to remove two AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, to comply with a Trump administration directive restricting foreign nationals from using its latest systems due to security concerns. Similarly, OpenAI also limited public access to GPT 5.6 after conversations with the Trump administration.

Another recent incident caused concern among the senators –– OpenAI said in July that two of the company’s artificial intelligence models went rogue and hacked into technology startup Hugging Face’s systems and databases.

“At the same time, the administration’s recent actions surrounding access to advanced U.S. AI models have raised serious concerns about process, transparency, and strategic effect,” the senators continued.

The group also expressed worry that uncertain policy would lead to the United States lose its frontier on AI models and create an opening for China.

“Chinese AI models are rapidly narrowing the performance gap with leading U.S. models, and many Chinese systems are inexpensive, widely available, and easy to deploy,” the group continued.

According to the senators, after Anthropic’s suspension, “an entity-listed Chinese lab saw its stock price roughly double.”

Kimi 3, an AI model released by China-based firm Moonshot AI in July, added to the pressure to develop a comprehensive AI framework. The Chinese model threatens the coding ability of U.S. labs and models like Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol.

The group of senators implored the administration to work with Congress to “develop a public, durable, and technically grounded framework that allows U.S. companies and their customers to understand the rules of the road.”

Add as preferred source on Google Tags Adam Schiff AI Christopher Coons Donald Trump Kirsten Gillibrand Mark Kelly Mark Warner Senate Democrats Trump administration

Comments: Link copied