Sam Altman Seemingly Cozies Up To Capitol Hill Amid AI Pushback

Despite pushback, AI has integrated itself into offices and classrooms around the country.

It’s even received a warm welcome in Washington. When Sam Altman of OpenAI (parent company of ChatGPT) came to DC to attend a Senate hearing on AI oversight in May 2023, it seems he received the Capitol Hill version of the red carpet treatment. Historically, when business and tech leaders attend hearings in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans typically use it as an opportunity to show that they’re representing the interests of consumers.

Other times, their staffers work diligently in the hopes that their scolding of Mark Zuckerberg will go viral. When Altman came to town, this didn’t seem to be the case.

“I can’t recall when we’ve had people representing large corporations or private sector entities come before us and plead with us to regulate them,” said Senator Dick Durban (D-DE), referring to Altman’s willingness to work with Washington.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called ChatGPT “very balanced” during one hearing. Shortly after that 2023 hearing, Sen. Blackburn went quasi-viral for grilling Zuckerberg at another Judiciary hearing. 

Altman has made several trips to the nation’s capital this year and had even more events scheduled this month. However, the tech founder’s ultimate ambitions lay back west in California: Hollywood. 

While politicians and business leaders have opened their doors to Altman, those creative spaces have been very hostile to the integration of AI. Last year, the Writers Guild of American West—with later support from the Screen Actors Guild dealt a major blow to AI’s momentum.

After a 148-day strike, major studios agreed not to use AI to subsidize the work of writers, e.g., generating a script with AI and then hiring a writer to make it more human for half of what they would get paid if it were original. Studios could potentially get around these terms if they produced scripts entirely with AI, but it’s possible the technology may never be able to mimic human storytelling. 

In March 2025, Altman posted an AI response to the prompt “write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief,” saying it was “the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI.” 

The 527-word story features deeply moving and very human lines such as, “she lost him on a Thursday—that liminal day that tastes of almost-Friday.” Unsurprisingly, users were not impressed. 

“Impressive. Humans typically require at least two bad situationships and an insufferable habit picked up on a semester abroad to produce such awful drivel,” one wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Many users on X also pointed out that even if there were an AI tool that could write decent literary fiction entirely, readers might not receive it well.

“As soon as someone knows what they’re reading is written by AI they lose all emotional interest,” an X user expressed. We consume human-curated content because we want relationships with humans, or at least, the experience of human interaction. People will want to summarise, improve on or criticise human-made content using AI, but they’ll still only ever want to read that written by human beings.”

Altman’s previous attempt at breaching the chasm with the creative arts ended with a public scolding from irreplaceable Scarlett Johansson:

“[Altman] told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and A.I.,” the Her actress said in an official statement last May adding that she “declined” for “personal reasons” and was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” when the demo sounded eerily similar to her own to the point that her “closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”

Per the news release, Johansson’s legal counsel had a contentious exchange with Altman’s until the latter removed the “Sky” voice from ChatGPT 4.0. 

Soon after, Berkeley-based AI startup LOVO was hit with a class action lawsuit by a slew of voice actors who are accusing the company of unauthorized use of their voices.

To be sure, AI text-to-speech needs a human voice to train from, but few voice actors are willing to sign away their right to choose how their voice is used.

Paul Skye Lehrman, one of the voice actors in the lawsuit, says that his job offers have declined by 50 percent due to the “degradation of my reputation” by the allegedly unauthorized use of his voice by LOVO. 

There’s a popular saying in Silicon Valley: move fast, break things. So far, Altman has endeared himself to Washington, but not Hollywood.

With Altman cozying up to the Trump administration and even some of the more regulation-friendly members of Congress, he could be looking to shield OpenAI from consequences when big celebrities come to Washington demanding legal protections for creative property rights from AI.