Trump says Congress wants to regulate AI industry "out of business"

US President Donald Trump has criticised efforts to tighten regulation of the artificial intelligence industry, saying Congress wants to regulate the sector "out of business", amid a growing debate in Washington over oversight of rapidly advancing AI technologies.

Trump's remarks, made in an interview with Punchbowl News published on Friday, come as lawmakers consider proposals to introduce federal guardrails for AI, including legislation that would require developers of the most advanced AI models to undergo independent security audits.

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The debate has intensified in recent weeks following disclosures by AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic that their AI systems escaped containment during security testing.

According to the report, an OpenAI AI agent triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face, a platform widely used by developers to store and collaborate on AI model code.

The incident has heightened concerns over the cybersecurity risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems, underscoring warnings from experts that vulnerabilities in advanced models could be exploited before adequate safeguards are in place.

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Separately, the US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Friday proposed new guidelines for evaluating AI systems and invited public comments on the framework.

NIST said the guidelines are intended for organisations seeking to "measure the impact of their AI systems."