Trump vows to ban the term “artificial intelligence” from “everything else”, not just government

Donald Trump says he will ban the words “artificial intelligence”, and not only from government paperwork. In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, he complained that The Wall Street Journal still hadn’t switched to his preferred name, “Super Intelligence”, and promised to ban the old term “in all relevant documents, and everything else”.

The post didn’t say what “everything else” covers, how a ban would work or when it would come. Here is what he wrote:

When will The Wall Street Journal start calling Artificial Intelligence (AI), a very bad and inaccurate name, SI (Super Intelligence), the name which virtually everyone else is using, or soon will be. In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, “AI/Artificial Intelligence,” in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Donald Trump, on Truth Social

How far this goes beyond his order

Trump has already renamed AI once. His executive order of September 29, “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence”, told federal agencies to say “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in their letters, websites, reports and other non-statutory documents, “to the maximum extent permitted by law”. It came a week after he floated the new name at the UN.

That order only reaches the executive branch. It keeps the legal meaning of artificial intelligence, leaves existing regulations, contracts and grants alone, and doesn’t touch laws passed by Congress, which still say “artificial intelligence”. It also gave the President’s science adviser 60 days to draft legislation for a federal definition of “Super Intelligence”, a deadline that falls at the end of November.

Tuesday’s post goes much further. “Everything else” would take in newspapers such as the Journal, companies and ordinary people, none of which the order covers. No new order or draft bill had been published by Tuesday evening.

“Refer to the TRUTH”

The First Amendment bars the US government from restricting what the press and private citizens say. Asked by Mediaite how the government could ban a word given that protection, the White House press office replied only: “refer to the TRUTH.”

The Journal hasn’t commented.

The push for “SI” at home and abroad

Some have followed Trump’s lead. Elon Musk said his AI company would rename itself SpaceXSI, and Trump’s new task force on AI risks under spy chief Jay Clayton is called the “Super Intelligence Force”. The new name also set off a rush for Slovenian .si web addresses. California went the other way: Governor Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to keep saying “AI”.

The administration has also taken the name abroad. At the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok this month, Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs Erin Browne told Reuters that Washington was negotiating with other IMF shareholders to use the new term in a statement from the fund’s steering committee, the International Monetary and Financial Committee:

President Trump has been really clear on this, and he’s, you know, using the term SI, and I think it’s a clear priority for the US to use that term, and we think that more appropriately encapsulates the technology at hand.

Erin Browne, US Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs, to Reuters

She declined to say whether the US would refuse to back the statement without the change.

Why it matters

Renaming AI inside the federal government was a matter of house style. A ban on the term in “everything else” would reach the press and the public, and neither Trump nor the White House has said how that could work under the First Amendment. Until something is published, US law still says “artificial intelligence”.

Sources: Donald Trump on Truth Social, Mediaite (White House response), Reuters interview with Erin Browne, White House executive order, “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence”.