Rep. Ted Lieu laid out his AI policymaking outlook for the remainder of this year and next during an Axios event with Maria today, suggesting it'll be an uphill climb.

Why it matters: As co-chair of the bipartisan House AI working group, Lieu is helping lay the groundwork for legislative action in the lower chamber.

Below is an excerpt from the conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The House task force has been around for about seven months now. What have been some of its accomplishments?

We've had a number of hearings that were very bipartisan. The members are very engaged and asking very insightful questions. The witnesses have been fantastic.

• Overall, there's just a lot of chaos — and I'm just being descriptive here — in a Republican-controlled Congress, right? Some of them are now threatening yet another government shutdown.
• So just keeping the lights on in a Republican-controlled Congress has been hard.

GOP leadership has poured cold water on pretty much all AI related legislation. What are the areas where the House and the Senate can come together to regulate AI?

One person in GOP leadership made some statements and it's not clear where the other folks are.

• My view of politics is everything seems impossible until it happens. And so we're just going to be doing our work and then we'll see what happens at the end of this year.

How are you thinking about the ways AI can benefit workers?

If you're going to buy a product as a company, some of the things you do is just think about questions you may want to ask the folks who try and sell you that product, such as what kind of testing do they do on this or what happens if things go wrong?

• Sen. [Ed] Markey and I introduced the Cyber Shield Act that allows companies to put on this designation that says there's some cybersecurity production in our products.
• The White House ran with that idea and that's gonna be rolling out pretty soon.

What's next: Lieu said he and other lawmakers are thinking through this month which bills and areas of AI will make it into the task force report.

• Lieu added the report is on track to be finalized by the end of this year and that list of priorities will inform next year's work.

Read more here.

A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether generative AI violates antitrust law, per a letter shared first with Ashley.

The big picture: Klobuchar has long been focused on the impact of digital platforms on journalism and pushed for competition bills that would help traditional media compete for digital advertising more successfully with the likes of Google and Meta.

• Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tammy Duckworth, Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith also signed the letter addressed to FTC chair Lina Khan and DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter.

What they're saying: The senators mainly focus on how generative AI can impact journalism and how it repackages online information, spitting it back out as part of a generative AI result.

• They want the DOJ and FTC to investigate whether certain genAI features "are a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition."
• "The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work," the lawmakers wrote.
• "Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform's AI."

What's next: Pushing for agencies to examine how genAI impacts an already-hurting space is Klobuchar's next foray into tackling journalism competition issues.

• Agencies are already looking into how big tech companies' deals to acquire or absorb AI firms may have violated antitrust laws.