Trump signs an executive order telling federal agencies to call AI "Super Intelligence" instead -- it changes no rule, no regulation and no safety requirement

President Trump signed an executive order Sept. 29 directing federal agencies to stop using the terms "artificial intelligence" and "AI" in official documents, websites, reports and communications, replacing them with "Super Intelligence" and "SI" "to the maximum extent permitted by law." The order states the executive branch "will not acknowledge the usage of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in any applicable setting" going forward. It does not require agencies to alter previously issued regulations, presidential actions, contracts, grants or historical documents, and it does not apply to private companies -- OpenAI, Anthropic and the rest of the industry can keep saying "AI."

The order's stated rationale is about branding, not capability. It argues the term "artificial intelligence" is 70 years old and no longer captures what the technology can now do, and that "Super Intelligence" "more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies." It directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to propose, within 60 days, legislative language establishing a federal definition of "Super Intelligence" and "SI" -- meaning the government has renamed a technology it has not yet legally defined.

The order landed the same week six major AI companies signed a separate, voluntary AI-safety accord with the White House, and the FTC opened a formal investigation into two of them. Nothing in the renaming order touches either one -- it does not add, remove or modify any safety, disclosure or enforcement requirement on how AI systems are built, tested or deployed. What changes is vocabulary, not oversight.