President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States will "officially" ban the term "artificial intelligence," the most dramatic step yet in his months-long campaign to rebrand the technology as "super intelligence."
Writing on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon, Trump accused The Wall Street Journal of clinging to what he called an inaccurate name and signaled that a government-wide prohibition on the phrase is imminent. For more context on this story, see our ongoing breaking AI news.
"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," Trump wrote. "In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, 'AI/Artificial Intelligence,' in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy."
The announcement was reported by Reuters, The Hill, Forbes, Variety and The Independent, among others, and lands after weeks of escalating rhetoric from the White House about what the technology should be called.
From Executive Order to Outright Ban
Tuesday's post is not the first time Trump has tried to dictate the vocabulary around the technology. In late September, he signed an executive order directing the federal government to use "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence."
"The terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of these technologies and the limitless opportunities they create for the American people," the order read. "Accordingly, the term 'Super Intelligence' more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies."
Since then, federal agencies have been updating official documents to swap out the old term, and Trump has openly framed the rename as a loyalty test. Earlier this month, he wrote in another Truth Social post that the White House considers anyone who uses "artificial intelligence" instead of "super intelligence" to be "THE ENEMY!"
Tuesday's message goes further: rather than merely preferring the new term in government writing, it promises to bar the old one outright.
What Would Banning a Word Actually Mean?
The practical scope of the promised ban remains unclear. Trump's post says the prohibition would cover "all relevant documents, and everything else," language that appears to reach well beyond federal paperwork, but no executive mechanism, timeline or enforcement process was specified.
As a general constitutional matter, the First Amendment bars the government from prohibiting Americans from using particular words in their own speech or publications. What a president can do is control the terminology used by federal agencies and tie federal grant money, contracts and regulatory language to preferred phrasing — which appears to be the direction of the executive order already in place.
The callout of The Wall Street Journal suggests the administration is also focused on press usage. Major outlets, standards organizations and the companies building the systems themselves all still use "artificial intelligence" or "AI" as the default industry term, and there is no sign that usage is shifting toward "super intelligence" outside of government documents.
It is also not obvious how federal statistical agencies, courts and scientific bodies that rely on the established term for consistency with international counterparts would comply. The term "artificial intelligence" anchors everything from academic citations to trade classifications, and the European Union's landmark AI Act uses the phrase in its very title.
The Safety Backdrop the Rebrand Sidesteps
The rename campaign has unfolded while prominent figures in the field warn that the technology's trajectory deserves more scrutiny, not a more triumphant name.
Last month, Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, warning in his resignation message: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Trump has brushed aside such concerns. Asked in September whether the AI industry should slow down or face more regulation, he framed the issue purely as a competition with China. "We're leading China in AI," Trump said at the Irish Open. "We're the most sophisticated country in the world. And frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins."
The president maintains close ties with industry leaders including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and his administration has generally favored accelerating buildout of AI data centers and model development over new restrictions.
Critics of the rebrand note the irony: a terminology push meant to emphasize the technology's power arrives just as safety researchers, and in some cases the labs themselves, warn that the systems' capabilities may be outpacing the ability to control them.
What Happens Next
Trump's post says the ban will arrive "in short order," which suggests a follow-up directive or amendment to the existing executive order. Federal agencies are already operating under the September order, and the passage of time is likely to bring more renamed documents, grant programs and public communications.
Whether the term disappears from American life is another question entirely. The phrase "artificial intelligence" has been the field's name since 1956, is embedded in law and regulation worldwide, and remains the universal shorthand in research, business and everyday usage. A government document rebrand can change what official paper says; it cannot, on its own, change what the rest of the world calls the technology defining this era.
AI Buzz Wire will continue tracking the administration's renaming push as new directives are issued.
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