President Donald Trump signaled Monday that he would signing an order this week targeting state AI laws.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP - Getty Images

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday evening that seeks to limit the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence and prevent the enforcement of existing state laws.

AI companies "want to be in the United States, and they want to do it here, and we have big investment coming. But if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it," Trump said at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, flanked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other key White House officials.

The order comes on the heels of a failed push to enact similar policy in Congress in late November, which followed a similar unsuccessful attempt in July. House Republicans recently tried to include a provision in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act asserting that only the federal government could legislate AI; the effort faced backlash and the language was eventually removed.

Given halting and slow-moving efforts to regulate AI at the federal level, critics of the executive order view it as an attempt to block all meaningful regulation on AI and put little faith in Congress to replace existing state laws with a nationwide standard.

Brad Carson, director of the bipartisan AI advocacy group Americans for Responsible Innovation and a former member of Congress, called the order another attempt to push through unpopular and unwise policy.

"Big Tech has failed twice to jam an AI amnesty into legislation," Carson told NBC News on Wednesday, predicting the executive order will soon be blocked in court.

Trump indicated in a Truth Social post Monday that he would sign an AI order this week.

"There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI," Trump wrote. "That won`t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS."

Shortly after Trump`s post, White House AI czar and Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks elaborated on the rationale for the executive order in a post on X.

Sacks argued that this domain of "interstate commerce" was "the type of economic activity that the Framers of the Constitution intended to reserve for the federal government to regulate."

At the Oval Office signing ceremony, Sacks said, "We have 50 states running in 50 different directions. It just doesn`t make sense."

"We`re creating a confusing patchwork of regulation, and what we need is a single federal standard, and that`s what the EO says," he added.

Mackenzie Arnold, director of U.S. policy at the Institute for Law and AI, said Wednesday that it`s crucial to put arguments like Sacks` into context. "By that same logic, states wouldn`t be allowed to pass product safety laws - almost all of which affect companies out of state that sell their goods nationally. But those laws are the classic example of acceptable state legislation," he said.

At the signing ceremony, supporters of the order also highlighted its importance for securing America`s AI advantage over China.

"It`s a race, and if China wins the race, whoever wins, the values of that country will affect all of AI," Cruz said. "We don`t want China`s values of surveillance centralized control by the communist government governing AI."

"We want American values of free speech, of individual liberty, of respecting the individual. So this executive order, I believe, is tremendously important," he added.

Regulation surrounding AI is quickly emerging as a hot-button political topic. From concerns about pollution, soaring electricity prices and noise from data centers to the potential for AI chatbots to exacerbate teens` mental health struggles, many Americans - on both sides of the aisle - are beginning to call for effective AI laws.

Many MAGA supporters view the current AI boom as a series of corporations run amuck, with a handful of powerful AI companies and CEOs acting as de-facto oligarchs. On Wednesday`s broadcast of his War Room podcast, Steve Bannon said it "doesn`t make sense" if "we`re having a Sputnik moment and we can`t have any controls over the frontier labs."

"You have more regulations about launching a nail salon on Capitol Hill than you have on the frontier labs. We have no earthly idea what they`re doing," Bannon said.

Politicians on the other side of the political spectrum are equally skeptical. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement earlier this week that the executive order is "an early Christmas present for his CEO billionaire buddies." Markey called the order "irresponsible, shortsighted, and an assault on states` ability to safeguard their constituents."