Gavin Newsom Orders California to Keep 'AI' Term After Trump's 'Super Intelligence' Rebrand

01 Oct 2026, 16:48 by Lucas Nolan · Breitbart

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order Wednesday directing state agencies to stick with the term “artificial intelligence,” a pointed rebuttal to President Trump’s push to rebrand the technology as “superintelligence.”

Politico reports that the dueling word choices played out over two days. Trump told reporters Tuesday he was directing the federal government to adopt the term “Super Intelligence,” arguing the technology is “not artificial, we all agree on that.” He’d recruited top tech executives to back the rebrand, and several of them used the term when speaking to reporters after a White House luncheon that same day.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” at the event. As Breitbart News previously reported:

“It is entitled the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, a Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities. This is a statement of principles that you’ll see — a statement of standards, commitments that are voluntary on behalf of the industry. It sets forth expectations. It’s, in short summary, robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review. That’s important because you need people to be providing oversight and transparency, and that’s what these leaders are going to do.” Johnson said Congress and the White House would continue to guide the AI industry’s “development in a safe manner.” Trump likened the White House Accord on Superintelligence to a “constitution.” “We had a great — really a great great meeting. It was something very, very special,” he said.

Newsom responded Wednesday with his own order, requiring California agencies to refer to the technology only as “artificial intelligence” or “AI.” His statement described the order as “informed by common sense,” and he took a direct shot at the president’s rebranding effort.

“Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House — that’s why California continues to lead,” Newsom said.

He paired the announcement with a round of bill signings aimed at protecting workers from AI-driven decisions. The new laws require layoff notices tied to AI and limit how companies can use AI in disciplinary actions and firings.

AI is pitting political power players against each other in a fight to control the future of this powerful technology. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.