U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a presentation with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin in the Oval Office of the White House on May 21, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Kent Nishimura | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is postponing the signing of his long-awaited executive order on the artificial intelligence industry.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the event, scheduled for late Thursday afternoon, was postponed “because I didn’t like certain aspects.”
The United States is ahead of China and the rest of the world in AI, and “we don’t want to do anything to disrupt that lead,” Trump said.
He added that AI is “bringing tremendous benefits” and worried that the executive order “may have been a stumbling block.”
The order gives the U.S. government the power to proactively evaluate AI models to identify security vulnerabilities, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing people working on the order.
The postponement was first reported by Axios early Thursday. When asked for comment on the postponement, the White House referred to President Trump’s remarks to CNBC.
Even as the Iran war and other sources of geopolitical conflict cause global economic turmoil, big investments by tech giants in the emerging AI industry are fueling rapid growth and pushing stock markets to new heights.
The AI-friendly Trump administration has welcomed the shift toward this technology, taking actions supported by industry leaders, including backing a call to pre-empt states from setting their own AI rules.
However, the administration has taken several steps to strengthen oversight of AI. This month, the federal AI Standards and Innovation Center announced agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk’s xAI to allow AI models to be evaluated before they are released to the public.
