WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of

lawmakers unveiled a bill late Wednesday that would make it

easier for the Biden administration to impose export controls on

AI models, in a bid to safeguard the prized U.S. technology

against foreign bad actors.

The bill, sponsored by House Republicans Michael McCaul,

John Molenaar, Max Wise and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, would

also give the Commerce Department express authority to bar

Americans from working with foreigners to develop AI systems

that pose risks to U.S. national security.

The legislation aims to bulletproof any future AI export

regulations from legal challenges. It comes as worries mount

that U.S. adversaries could use the models, which mine vast

amounts of text and images to summarize information and generate

content, to wage aggressive cyber attacks or even create potent

biological weapons.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the United States is

poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard U.S. AI

from China and Russia with preliminary plans to impose export

controls on the most advanced proprietary AI Models.

But under existing U.S. law, it is much more difficult for

the Commerce Department, which oversees U.S. export policy, to

regulate the export of open source AI models, which can be

freely downloaded.

If approved, the measure would remove roadblocks to

regulating the export of open source AI contained in the

International Emergency Economic Powers Act and also give the

Commerce Department express authority to regulate AI systems.

China has been heavily relying on many open source models

developed in the West such as Meta Platforms' ( META ) "Llama"

series.

In March, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a

high-level research lab, was quoted by Chinese state media as

stating that the majority of homegrown Chinese AI models were in

fact built using Meta's Llama models and that this posed a key

challenge to China's AI development.

In November 2023, 01.AI, one of the most high-profile AI

unicorns in China founded by Google's former executive Lee

Kai-fu, faced a major backlash after some AI engineers found

that its AI model Yi-34B was built on Meta's Llama system.

It also comes after Microsoft ( MSFT ) announced it was

investing $1.5 billion in United Arab Emirates-based artificial

intelligence firm G42, giving G42 permission use to use

Microsoft ( MSFT ) cloud services to run its AI applications.

The deal, which involved a security agreement inked with the

U.S. and UAE governments, was unveiled despite growing concerns

in the United States over deepening ties between China and the

Gulf states, including the UAE.