US to mandate AI vendors measure political bias for federal sales

Adds detail about requirement in paragraphs 2-5

By Courtney Rozen

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. government will require artificial intelligence vendors to measure political "bias" to sell their chatbots to federal agencies, according to a Trump administration statement released on Thursday.

The requirement will apply to all large language models bought by federal agencies, with the exception of national security systems, according to the statement.

President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in July to avoid buying large language models that he labeled as "woke." Thursday's statement gives more detail to that directive, saying that developers should not "intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments" into a chatbot's outputs.

The U.S. government is a major customer for the world's largest technology companies. The Trump administration has worked with companies, such as Microsoft MSFT.O and Meta META.O, to provide low-cost access to their AI tools. That effort is expected to continue.

Microsoft and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Tom Hogue)

((courtney.rozen@thomsonreuters.com))