Person with laptop

AI, artificial intelligence, is creeping and flooding into our lives. Planning dinner, designing parts for spaceships, writing speeches, and helping with homework are just some of the many ways it is being used.

Oregon legislators are trying to figure out how the state might want to regulate AI. Many other states have already taken action. A state task force is starting with the very basics. It is going to have to define it first. The term is not currently defined in state statute. And without defining it, you can’t regulate it.

There are representatives from business, government, a consumer advocate, universities and more on the task force. They are scheduled to meet on Friday and get started.

The plan is to keep the state definitions close to those in federal rules. “The terms and definitions identified by the task force for use in legislation must align as closely as possible with terms and definitions used in federal rules,” said the bill that established the task force, House Bill 4153.

We doubt the task force will need it, but a word has already been coined to describe AI-generated content that nobody really wants to see or deal with: slop. It’s similar to what “spam” describes for email. So to use it in a sentence: “Don’t read that slop; Read The Bulletin.”