Elon Musk has decided Colorado’s AI law needs a proper scrap in federal court, claiming it will force AI to provide accurate but woke information, which he disagrees with.
xAI has filed a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s landmark AI bill, as President Donald Trump’s administration and big industry players try to stop US states from regulating the tech.
Colorado’s bill, due to kick in during the summer, was the first state-level effort passed to add protections against “algorithmic discrimination” in AI systems.
Musk’s AI lab, which recently merged with rocket group SpaceX, says the bill would force it to “promote the state’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular” rather than its own “disinterested pursuit of truth”.
The lawsuit is the latest move in a running brawl between AI companies, Trump’s administration and individual states over how to regulate a booming technology.
AI start-ups have pushed back against attempts to put guardrails in California and New York, while Trump’s AI advisers have signalled they want Washington to run a light-touch national framework.
xAI, best known for its Grok model, claims Colorado’s bill would violate First Amendment free speech protections.
“Its provisions prohibit developers of AI systems from producing speech that the State of Colorado dislikes, while compelling them to conform their speech to a state-enforced orthodoxy on controversial topics of great public concern,” according to a filing in federal court on Thursday.
The law “severely burdens the development and use of AI” and would “embed the State’s preferred views into the very fabric of AI systems”, xAI said.
In 2024, the state became the first to pass a comprehensive bill regulating artificial intelligence, aiming to prevent AI discrimination in education, employment, lending, healthcare and housing.
The bill requires developers to avoid “algorithmic discrimination”, tell the state attorney-general about “foreseeable risks” and give consumers a chance to “correct any incorrect personal data” and “appeal an adverse consequential decision”.
xAI’s civil claim takes aim at the bill’s definition of “algorithmic discrimination”, which says it does not include efforts “to increase diversity or redress historical discrimination”.
Colorado governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed the bill “with reservations” and has urged state legislators to amend it.
The legislation was meant to start in February but has been pushed to June to give negotiators more time.
In December, Trump signed an executive order urging the US Congress to pass “a minimally burdensome national standard” on AI rather than “a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that make compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups”.
The president’s order singled out Colorado’s law, arguing that it “may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a ‘differential treatment or impact’ on protected groups”.
Congress has pushed back on efforts to ban states from regulating AI models.
