Trump Wants to Ban the Term 'AI' — Can a President Rename a Technology?

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon that he will "officially" ban the term "AI/Artificial Intelligence" in "all relevant documents, and everything else," calling it "a very bad and inaccurate name." He promoted "super intelligence" (SI) as the replacement and called on The Wall Street Journal to adopt it.

The post escalates an executive order Trump signed on Sept. 29 directing federal agencies to use "super intelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence" in official communications and policies. The White House framed the term as better capturing AI's "promise, potential and rapidly advancing capabilities." Trump had also emphasized the preferred terminology during a White House meeting with Elon Musk and other tech executives last month.

The term "artificial intelligence" dates back decades and remains the industry standard. That makes the push less a technical correction than a question about how language is set — by real-world usage or by executive authority — and it could affect government documents, agencies, and public discourse around a technology already embedded in daily life.

Trump's framing treats the name as a policy problem — "inaccurate," in his words — rather than a matter of convention.

What the post does not do is change how the phrase is used outside the federal government. The September order binds agencies. Tuesday's statement, posted to Trump's own platform, does not by itself reach private companies, media organizations or the public, and no enforcement mechanism or penalty has been described.

That is the tension in the announcement: language is normally set by usage, and a president can direct what federal agencies write without directing what everyone else says. Federal agencies are the only bodies currently required to comply.