Federal AI regulations are receiving renewed attention in Washington after North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general calling on Congress to establish a comprehensive national framework for artificial intelligence.
The September 24, 2026 initiative brought together 26 attorneys general and was led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The group urged congressional leaders to move quickly as increasingly sophisticated AI systems become more widely deployed across businesses, government agencies and critical infrastructure.
Jackson’s involvement puts North Carolina among the states arguing that AI development should continue alongside clearer rules governing safety, transparency and accountability.
The coalition is not calling for an end to AI development. Instead, its letter argues that lawmakers should create safeguards capable of responding to the technology as it becomes more powerful.
Why attorneys general want Congress to act
Artificial intelligence has moved rapidly from experimental software into tools used for coding, research, customer service, cybersecurity and complex automated tasks.
The attorneys general say that growth has created benefits but also new risks.
In their letter to congressional leaders, they raised concerns about increasingly autonomous AI systems and their potential impact on financial networks, critical infrastructure and national security. They argued that relying entirely on voluntary company safeguards may not be enough as AI systems become more capable.
The coalition therefore wants federal AI regulations that establish minimum safety requirements while still allowing states to respond to problems within their jurisdictions.
That balance between federal standards and state authority is becoming one of the central questions in America’s AI policy debate.
Federal AI regulations could introduce safety testing
One of the coalition’s biggest proposals involves stronger oversight of advanced AI systems before and after deployment.
The attorneys general want federal authorities to establish safety testing standards supported by consistent performance benchmarks.
Under such an approach, developers of advanced models could face clearer expectations for demonstrating that their systems have been tested for potentially dangerous behaviour before being released more widely.
The coalition also wants AI safety oversight to involve specialists with expertise in model testing and risk assessment.
Supporters of such standards argue that common benchmarks could make it easier for regulators, companies and researchers to compare risks across different AI systems.
At the same time, the details of any federal framework would ultimately have to be negotiated by Congress.
Government-led AI incident reporting is another priority
Federal AI regulations should also establish a more coordinated system for handling serious AI incidents, according to the attorneys general.
Their proposal calls for uniform and transparent government-led incident response, including public findings that could help developers learn from problems discovered elsewhere in the industry.
That would represent a shift from an environment where individual companies often investigate problems internally.
A national reporting structure could potentially give regulators and researchers a clearer picture of recurring risks while providing companies with information they can use to improve their own systems.
The coalition argues that transparency becomes particularly important when AI tools are capable of acting with greater independence.
States want to keep their own AI enforcement powers
Another important part of the proposal concerns the relationship between federal and state regulation.
Jackson and the other attorneys general do not want new federal AI regulations to automatically prevent states from adopting or enforcing their own protections.
The coalition specifically asked Congress to avoid broadly pre-empting state AI laws and to allow state officials to help enforce federal protections.
This issue has already become a major part of the national AI debate.
Jackson previously opposed proposals that would significantly restrict states’ ability to regulate artificial intelligence. In 2025, he joined other attorneys general in arguing that states should remain able to respond to issues including deepfakes, consumer scams and harmful applications of AI.
The latest proposal suggests that state attorneys general see federal and state enforcement as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Jackson has increasingly focused on AI oversight
The latest congressional appeal is not Jackson’s first involvement in artificial intelligence policy.
Jackson and Utah Attorney General Derek Brown have also worked through a bipartisan attorneys general task force focused on emerging AI risks.
The initiative has examined issues including child safety, AI-generated deepfakes, privacy, cybersecurity and accountability for companies developing or deploying AI systems.
Jackson has described artificial intelligence as one of the defining issues facing policymakers while also acknowledging its potential benefits.
That combination — encouraging useful innovation while creating protections against misuse — has become a recurring theme among state officials looking at AI regulation.
Federal AI regulations could also involve international cooperation
The attorneys general argue that national regulation alone may eventually be insufficient for the most advanced AI systems.
Their recommendations include greater international cooperation as governments try to manage the development of increasingly capable models.
The coalition wants the United States to work with other countries on managing the pace and safety of advanced AI development, particularly where emerging systems could create risks extending beyond national borders.
AI companies themselves operate internationally, while models developed in one country can often be accessed almost instantly elsewhere.
That makes international coordination increasingly relevant to debates about advanced AI safety, cybersecurity and technical standards.
AI regulation debate is moving beyond individual states
For several years, much of America’s AI legislation has developed at state level.
Different states have introduced measures dealing with areas such as automated decision-making, deepfakes, privacy and AI systems used by children.
But as the technology becomes more sophisticated, attorneys general are arguing that a national baseline is also necessary.
A federal framework could create more consistent rules for developers operating across multiple states while allowing individual states to address local concerns.
Exactly how much authority should remain with states is likely to remain a major issue in future congressional negotiations.
What happens next with federal AI regulations?
The attorneys general’s letter does not itself create new rules.
Congress would need to draft, debate and pass legislation before the proposals could become binding federal law.
Lawmakers would also have to settle difficult questions about which AI systems should face additional oversight, how safety tests should work, which federal agencies should enforce the rules and how federal requirements should interact with existing state laws.
For now, the bipartisan appeal adds pressure on Congress to move the AI regulation debate from broad principles toward specific legislation.
With Jeff Jackson and attorneys general from more than two dozen U.S. jurisdictions supporting the initiative, federal AI regulations are likely to remain a significant policy issue as lawmakers decide how much oversight rapidly advancing AI systems should face.
The debate is increasingly less about whether artificial intelligence will reshape everyday life and more about what safeguards should accompany that transformation.
