US State Department orders diplomats to say 'super intelligence' instead of AI after Trump's UNGA rebrand

The US State Department is ordering diplomats in its international organisations bureau to use the term “super intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence” in all communications, following President Donald Trump’s attempt to rebrand the technology in his address to the UN General Assembly this week, the Associated Press reported.

“Following the president’s remarks at the GA today, please change all references of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ to ‘Super Intelligence’ in our documents and positions. We will be using ‘SI’ in all remarks, positions and press elements moving forward,” said an email sent on Tuesday to employees by Michael Drager, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

The email, titled “Change in Nomenclature AI to SI”, was obtained by AP on Wednesday. The bureau runs US diplomatic missions to all UN and multilateral agencies around the world; it was not immediately clear whether other State Department bureaus would follow suit.

On Tuesday, Trump told the General Assembly he would “officially” change the name of AI, saying the existing name makes the technology seem “fake”. “The use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake, it makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing,” he said, adding that government documents would henceforth use “the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial”.

US representatives used the “SI” term at Wednesday’s UN Security Council meeting on AI, where tech executives including Anthropic chief Dario Amodei urged the council to rein in the technology. AP noted the order could mean renaming the “AI Force” Trump announced this weekend to the “SI Force”.

Flip News covered the UN Security Council AI briefing’s substance earlier — this is the follow-up on the nomenclature directive.