AI Foundation Model Transparency Act of 2023

• Authority: United States Congress
• Parent authority: Federal government
• Jurisdiction: United States
• Collections: U.S. federal laws
• Most recent activity: Defunct
• Most recent activity date: 2025-01-03

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• Governance failure
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
• Exposure to toxic content
• Unequal performance across groups
• Compromise of privacy
• AI system security vulnerabilities
• False or misleading information
• Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
• Cyberattacks, weapon development or use
• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort
• Environmental harm
• AI possessing dangerous capabilities
• Lack of capability or robustness

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has minimal to good coverage of approximately 6-8 subdomains, with primary focus on transparency and governance (7.4), privacy concerns (2.1), discrimination risks (1.1, 1.3), misinformation (3.1), and governance structures (6.5). Coverage is concentrated in system safety, transparency, and fairness domains, with the document primarily addressing these risks through mandatory disclosure requirements.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• Information

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the sector are described.

• Finance & Insurance
• Real Estate, Rental & Leasing
• Scientific Research & Development Services
• Educational Services
• Health Care & Social Assistance
• Public Administration (excl. National Security)
• National Security

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This is an external regulation that applies broadly across all sectors where foundation models are deployed. The document explicitly references multiple high-risk application domains including healthcare, finance, education, employment, public services, and law enforcement, indicating cross-sectoral governance of AI foundation models.

Legislative Status

Hard Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is a binding legislative act from the United States Congress that directs the Federal Trade Commission to promulgate regulations with mandatory compliance requirements and enforcement mechanisms including penalties for violations.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: United States Congress; Mr. Beyer; Ms. Eshoo
• Summary: The document is a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Beyer and Ms. Eshoo, making the United States Congress the proposing entity.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Developer, AI_Deployer
• Entities: Covered entities (persons, partnerships, or corporations providing foundation models with over 100,000 monthly output instances or over 30,000 monthly users); Common carriers subject to Communications Act; Non-profit organizations
• Summary: The Act targets 'covered entities' which are defined as persons, partnerships, or corporations that provide foundation models meeting specified usage thresholds, including those over which the FTC has jurisdiction, common carriers, and non-profit organizations.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: Federal Trade Commission (Commission)
• Summary: The Federal Trade Commission is explicitly designated as the enforcement authority with powers to promulgate regulations, enforce compliance, and impose penalties for violations.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Entities: Federal Trade Commission (Commission); National Institute of Standards and Technology; Office of Science and Technology Policy; Register of Copyrights
• Summary: The FTC is designated to monitor compliance through submission requirements and annual assessments. NIST, OSTP, and the Register of Copyrights serve consultative monitoring roles in assessing and updating standards.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Collect and Process Data
• Build and Use Model
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document primarily addresses the Build and Use Model, Verify and Validate, Deploy, and Operate and Monitor stages. It focuses extensively on transparency requirements for training data and model documentation (Build), performance evaluation (Verify), deployment disclosure (Deploy), and ongoing monitoring through annual updates (Operate and Monitor).

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Models
• Foundation Models
• Compute Threshold
• Open Weight / Open Source

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly defines and focuses on 'foundation models' as AI models trained on broad data with at least 1 billion parameters applicable across wide contexts. It does not explicitly mention frontier AI, general purpose AI, task-specific AI, generative AI, predictive AI, or open-weight models, though it does consider alternative provisions for open-source foundation models.