It's SI or else.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that anyone who doesn't use his preferred term of super intelligence (SI) will be considered an "enemy" of the White House.
"The White House considers anyone that uses the term, 'Artificial Intelligence,' as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, 'Super Intelligence,' THE ENEMY!" Trump posted on Truth Social.
Trump's statement suggests the White House may punish companies or individuals who do not abide by its preferred speech, which would be a potential textbook First Amendment violation if enforced.
The White House has moved to rebrand artificial intelligence, which Trump said suggests that the technology is "fake."
While some companies, most notably Meta, which has a SuperIntelligence Labs, had super intelligence embedded in their branding before Trump's recent move, their descriptions were more about the future of artificial intelligence than an outright rejection of the terminology itself. After meeting with industry leaders in late September at the White House, Trump signed an executive order that required federal departments and agencies "to the maximum extent permitted by law" to use "'Super Intelligence' and 'SI' in place of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI' in official correspondence, public communications, websites," among other official communications.
The order did not apply to private-sector companies like OpenAI because the White House has no legal authority to enforce such a measure.
Since Trump's statements and orders, at least one company has followed the White House's wishes. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X that the space and technology company would rename its AI unit, SpaceXAI, to SpaceXSI.
If Musk follows through on his promise, it would be the second such rebrand for what was originally known as xAI this year. In February, SpaceX announced that it was acquiring xAI, makers of the Grok chatbot, and rechristened the unit as SpaceXAI in July. As of Thursday afternoon, SpaceXAI's X account still said "SpaceXAI."
It remains to be seen what other leading AI and tech companies will do.
There was a bit of awkwardness after Trump made his wishes known on the same day of the highly anticipated AI lunch. During a White House panel discussion, Nvidia CEO Jensen Wang corrected himself when he said "AI" instead of "SI." In comments made with Trump standing just feet from him, OpenAI President Greg Brockman said the company "builds artificial intelligence" to help everyone.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently dismissed the possibility of renaming the company during an interview with Politico.
"No plans to do that," he told the Politico Decoded podcast. "But we have been talking about super intelligence a lot and we will continue to talk about it."