Hours after his return to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump made a significant impact on the future of the fast developing area of artificial intelligence by repealing former President Joe Biden’s limits on it.
The frequently “slipshod” wording of Donald Trump’s numerous executive orders is now being attributed by legal experts to his alleged usage of artificial intelligence.
In a post on X, economist Robert Reich asserted that 16 further directives signed on the first day of Trump’s presidency were “ripped straight from the pages” of the right-wing Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan for the Trump government.
But during his campaign, Trump claimed to have no knowledge about Project 2025.
Observers have pointed out that many of Trump’s orders are hard to read and comprehend, with inaccuracies and stilted language.
In a post on Bluesky, appellate attorney Raffi Melkonian of Houston drew attention to a passage in one of Trump’s executive orders, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,” that declares the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America.
Its language evokes a grade-school level textbook description similar to the bland language of AI-powered chatbots.
“The Gulf is also home to vibrant American fisheries teeming with snapper, shrimp, grouper, stone crab, and other species, and it is recognized as one of the most productive fisheries in the world, with the second largest volume of commercial fishing landings by region in the Nation, contributing millions of dollars to local American economies,” notes the order.
That section was “absolutely written by AI,” Melkonian argued, who called the passage “written for morons.”
In one of the most notable garbled executive orders, Trump declared that males and females are the only genders that exist. He also insisted in the order that gender is determined at conception.
In fact, genitalia at conception are “phenotypically female,” notes the National Library of Medicine. A percentage of embryos will develop male sexual characteristics, but only beginning at about six weeks in the womb.
16 of the 26 Day One executive orders signed by Trump were ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025.
Russ Vought, an architect of Project 2025, testified before the Senate today as Trump’s OMB nominee.
Project 2025 was always the MAGA agenda.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 22, 2025
Beyond the significant error, the order is almost impossible to read. It states that the genders include a “person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell” and a “person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” — an awkward and likely AI-concocted manner of language that’s almost opaque.
“This is poor, slipshod work,” Slate journalist and legal expert Mark Joseph Stern said of a number of the orders in a Bluesky post, adding that the decrees have been “obviously assisted by AI.”
“Lots of reporting suggested that, this time around, Trump and his lawyers would avoid the sloppy legal work that plagued his first administration so they’d fare better in the courts,” Stern noted. “I see no evidence of that in this round of executive orders.”
