By Amrith Ramkumar and Annie Linskey

White House officials are preparing an executive order targeting tech companies with what they see as "woke" artificial-intelligence models, their latest effort to go after diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, people familiar with the matter said.

The order would dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased, an effort to combat what administration officials see as overly liberal AI models, the people said.

As AI chatbots like Google's Gemini have proliferated in recent years, some conservatives have argued they are politically liberal. Companies have come under fire for specific prompt responses that have angered consumers or for images inaccurately depicting historical figures as people of color. Google took heat last year after its Gemini AI assistant showed a black George Washington and racially diverse Nazis.

The trend has troubled AI Czar David Sacks and Sriram Krishnan, senior White House policy adviser for AI, the architects of the executive order and two of Trump's top tech advisers, the people said.

Because nearly all major tech companies are vying to have their AI tools used by the federal government, the order could have far-reaching impacts and force developers to be extremely careful about how their models are developed.

AI companies train their models by scraping a swath of information from the internet and other published materials. The models sometimes "hallucinate," generating wrong answers or surprising responses. That can make it difficult to tell what is causing inaccuracy or perceived bias.

The executive order would be one of several expected to be released next week outlining President Trump's vision for winning the AI race with China, the people said. Trump is expected to speak about his AI "action plan" at that time.

Another order is expected to promote exports of U.S. chips and AI tools using organizations like the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the people said. Sending technology to countries friendly with the U.S. is a priority for the administration to ensure they run on American AI and not Chinese products. Sacks and Krishnan have spearheaded an effort to speed up exports of high-performance AI chips from Nvidia to countries such as the United Arab Emirates.

Speeding up permitting for data centers needed to train models and accelerating energy production for those data centers is also expected to be a focus. Trump, Sacks and other administration officials hailed tens of billions of dollars of investment into those types of projects in Pittsburgh earlier this week.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is overseeing some of the AI work, declined to comment.

The order targeting "woke" AI is expected to be among the most controversial measures because it could be seen by some in the tech industry as playing favorites among developers.

Elon Musk's xAI, for example, has made political neutrality and being "anti-woke" a priority. But it faced criticism recently when its Grok chatbot presented antisemitic content praising Hitler. Musk and Sacks are close friends and former colleagues. Musk recently left the administration after a public feud with Trump.

Some startups have tried to develop AI models without guardrails and avoid what they deem as censorship.

Anthropic, a highly valued AI developer launched by former OpenAI executives, could also be seen as more liberal after hiring several top officials from the Biden administration. Anthropic has also opposed several of the administration's stances on chip exports and AI regulations, making it a target for criticism from Sacks and other officials, some of the people said. Anthropic has said its actions aren't politically motivated.

Trump has targeted what he deems as bias against conservatives online going back to his first administration. In his second term, he has launched a war on DEI initiatives, seeking to eradicate the efforts from the federal government and companies that do business with it, using executive orders and other actions.

Write to Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com and Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 17, 2025 17:51 ET (21:51 GMT)

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