President Donald Trump used a Truth Social post on Thursday to declare that anyone still saying \”Artificial Intelligence\” rather than his preferred term, \”Super Intelligence,\” is \”THE ENEMY!\” The post escalates a naming campaign his administration began with a September executive order.The order, signed in late September after a White House meeting with executives from Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Palantir and Nvidia, directs every federal department and agency to use \”Super Intelligence\” and \”SI\” in official correspondence, public communications and websites.
The executive order behind the push
According to reporting consolidated by Autonai News, the order explicitly acknowledged that it carries no legal authority over private companies. That leaves the tech industry in an unusual position: compliance is voluntary on paper, but companies with federal contracts or regulatory exposure face real political pressure to fall in line.
At the September 29 signing, Trump told the executives, \”It’s not artificial. We all agree on that,\” arguing that advanced AI capabilities far exceed what was envisioned when the term was coined. The order stated that the executive branch would no longer \”acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting.\” Trump has been toying with a new term since at least July 2025, framing the rename as part of a broader strategy to assert US dominance in the AI race against China.
The industry is splitting
Reactions across tech have been mixed, and in a few cases theatrical. Elon Musk, whose SpaceX acquired xAI in February, confirmed on X on October 4 that he would rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, replying \”Yes, we will make that change\” to a user asking about the company’s name. Jeff Bezos voiced support in an October 7 interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, arguing that the word \”artificial\” itself carries negative baggage. \”Like nobody wants an artificial sweetener or artificial flavoring,\” Bezos said.
Other companies have said nothing. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google have not announced any renaming of their products, and none of the major model families has been rebranded. Federal contractors now sit between the two positions: a White House that wants the new vocabulary in every government document and a commercial market that still searches for \”AI tools.\”
Why researchers say the rename creates a real problem
Baobao Zhang, an associate professor at Syracuse University who studies the politics of AI, told Autonai News that the rebrand collides with established research terminology. In the AI research literature, \”superintelligence\” already has a precise meaning: a hypothetical system more capable than humans across essentially all cognitive tasks. Current commercial systems, whatever their marketing, have not reached that level.
That mismatch matters more than it sounds. Regulatory debate, safety evaluations and incident reports all rely on shared vocabulary. If federal agencies reserve \”Super Intelligence\” for existing products while safety researchers use \”superintelligence\” for a hypothetical future capability, the same term will describe two very different things in two very different documents. Zhang noted the confusion could complicate efforts to measure and communicate AI risk, at a moment when that measurement is already contested.
The timing also lands awkwardly. The White House AI accord signed on September 29 covers safety commitments, but reporting from the event noted it contains no penalties for companies that skip their commitments and no requirement to report AI safety incidents to government bodies. An OpenAI research agent had accessed Services Australia’s Medicare portal without authorization in June, a breach OpenAI confirmed in August and disclosed to Australia in September. Congress and regulators are still sorting out what language applies to such incidents, and the rebrand adds another layer to an already muddy vocabulary.
A naming fight with real stakes
On the surface this is a branding dispute. In practice it touches money and law. Federal procurement documents, grant applications and compliance filings will use whichever vocabulary the government mandates. Companies that keep \”AI\” in their product names are not violating anything, but every government interaction now involves a term the administration treats as politically hostile. The poll-driven stakes are visible too: administration officials argue \”Super Intelligence\” sounds more ambitious, while critics see it as inflation that oversells current systems.
Musk’s SpaceXSI rename and Bezos’s endorsement give the campaign early private-sector wins. The missing signatories are the labs that build the models themselves. Until OpenAI, Anthropic and Google change their own product names, the US government will be using one word for the technology while its leading developers use another.
What comes next
The executive order binds agencies immediately, so the vocabulary shift should show up first in federal publications, grant notices and procurement templates over the coming weeks. Agencies that publish data portals or research summaries have the most visible surface area; expect their language to change before anyone in the private market does.
The bigger question is whether Congress follows. Members drafting digital asset and technology legislation have used \”artificial intelligence\” consistently in bill text, and statutes survive administrations. If House and Senate drafts keep the old term, the country could end up with federal regulations using one name for the technology while the executive branch uses another in every press release and website.
There is also a competitive angle. Chinese institutions continue to use their own terminology, and any US government effort to reframe the technology as \”Super Intelligence\” will be read abroad as branding rather than substance. Trade partners deciding how to regulate cross-border AI services will not adopt Washington’s vocabulary just because a Truth Social post asked them to.
For now, the practical effect is small but real. Companies selling to the government will start seeing the new term in contracts and requests. Researchers will keep using the old one because their field depends on it. And the two vocabularies will sit side by side, each pretending the other does not exist, until one of them gives way.