The New U.S. AI Preemption Order: Your 7‑Day Compliance Plan for 2026

Published: December 20, 2025

Quick checklist — what you’ll get in this post:

What changed on December 11, 2025 and what it means for startups
Who’s affected, timelines to watch, and immediate risks
A 7‑day founder plan you can ship without derailing roadmap
Links to deeper playbooks on AG scrutiny, iOS consent, and browser security

What changed (in plain English)

On December 11, 2025, the U.S. announced a national policy push to avoid a 50‑state patchwork of AI rules. The order:

Directs the Attorney General to create an AI Litigation Task Force within 30 days (deadline: January 10, 2026) to challenge certain state AI laws.
Tasks the Commerce Department to publish, within 90 days, an evaluation of state AI laws that conflict with federal policy (deadline: March 11, 2026).
Signals potential funding limits for states with conflicting laws and asks the FTC to clarify how “deceptive” AI outputs will be treated nationally within 90 days.
Calls for a federal framework that preempts conflicting state AI laws, while leaving room for state action in areas like child safety and public‑sector AI use.

Who this affects (and how)

If you ship AI features—chatbots, agents, recommendations, ad tooling, or decision support—this touches your roadmap, contracts, disclosures, and go‑to‑market. Even if federal policy ultimately preempts some state requirements, you still need to demonstrate safety, truthfulness, and non‑deceptive UX. Expect buyer legal teams to ask for proof: evals, audit logs, incident playbooks, and vendor controls.

Use the next 1–2 weeks to tighten governance across product, data, and comms. Pair this with our recent guides:

Your 7‑Day Founder Plan

This plan assumes a lean team. Focus on the highest‑risk surfaces first and capture evidence of what you shipped.

Day 1 — Executive brief + exposure map

Hold a 30‑minute exec sync to align on the December 11 policy, timelines, and risk appetite.
Inventory where AI touches users: support bots, shopping assistants, pricing, personalization, email, and agent tools.
List your state exposure by users and contracts. Flag deals in stricter jurisdictions for extra diligence.

Day 2 — Truthfulness, disclosures, and minors

Add inline disclosures near risky affordances: “May be inaccurate,” “Not medical/legal advice,” and easy human handoff.
Ship an age‑aware mode: limit capabilities for minors; escalate to trusted resources where appropriate.
Freeze questionable prompts and flows that could mislead or manipulate until guardrails are in place.

Day 3 — Data flows, vendors, and iOS consent

Map data flows for every AI feature: data types, destinations, retention, regions.
If your app sends personal data to external AI, add just‑in‑time consent and update your Privacy Policy. See our iOS guide: Third‑Party AI consent.
Route vendor calls through a server‑side proxy to strip identifiers, enforce region allow‑lists, and add kill switches.

Day 4 — Contracts and policy guardrails

Update DPAs/MSAs: truthfulness commitments, model/provider transparency, safety eval summaries, and incident SLA.
Add an “agent firewall” policy: deny‑by‑default tools; allow‑list purchases, refunds, email, and code execution.
For public‑sector or education customers, prepare a short “Policy Binder”: model cards used, eval results, logs, and user safety UX.

Day 5 — Run safety & deception evals (and publish a summary)

Test refusal to harmful requests, manipulation resistance, and age‑aware behaviors.
Benchmark end‑to‑end tasks and record violations, human handoffs, and time‑to‑contain.
Publish a 1‑pager “Safety Update” in your Help Center summarizing what you tested and fixed.

Day 6 — Browser & prompt security

Enforce managed browser profiles for work; move to an extension allow‑list; block “free VPN/recorder” families.
Deploy prompt‑aware DLP to catch PII, keys, or order IDs before they reach AI tools.
Follow our 7‑day hardening playbook: Browser & Prompt Security.

Day 7 — Comms, audit trail, and sales enablement

Create tamper‑evident logs for prompts, tool calls, policy checks, and overrides. Redact sensitive fields.
Ship a public “AI Safety & Transparency” page: disclosures, eval highlights, change log, and contact.
Enable sales with a 2‑page “AI Governance Brief” your AEs can send to legal/procurement.

Dates to put on your wall

January 10, 2026: AI Litigation Task Force creation deadline (30 days after Dec 11).
March 11, 2026: Commerce and FTC 90‑day deliverables expected (policy evaluations and guidance around deceptive AI).

Don’t wait for the dust to settle. Buyers will ask for proof before those dates. Ship now and walk into Q1 with receipts.

Startup and e‑commerce angles to watch

Sales velocity: A clear governance brief removes legal friction in late‑stage deals.
Support automation: Safer bots reduce escalations and refund abuse; align with our AG compliance sprint.
SEO & distribution: With assistants and browsers surfacing more links, governance signals (evals, disclosures) help trust and ranking. Pair with our 7‑day SEO plan.

Copy/paste templates

Disclosure (inline): “This AI assistant may be inaccurate or incomplete and is not a substitute for professional advice. For sensitive requests, contact support.”

Policy snippet (Privacy): “We offer optional AI features powered by partners. With your permission, we may send selected content to these services solely to perform the requested task. We do not allow partners to use your content to train their models unless you opt in.”

Ship this faster with HireNinja

Short on time? HireNinja can stand up AI governance in days—not months:

Prebuilt agent policies (refunds, email, browsing) and deny‑by‑default tool controls
One‑click eval suites for safety, manipulation resistance, and end‑to‑end tasks
Audit‑ready logs with redaction and export for procurement and regulators

Try HireNinja or review plans on our Pricing page.

Want help applying this to your product? Reply to this post or talk to our team.

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