The Justice Department has told its employees to replace “AI” with “Super Intelligence,” or “SI,” in their official communications, and the instruction reaches court filings “when appropriate,” according to NBC News and Bloomberg Law.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter relayed the instructions to department employees Tuesday in a memo reviewed by Bloomberg Law. NBC News, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that a top Trump administration official had told the department to adopt the rebrand. The memo, titled “Super Intelligence,” states that “this directive shall extend to court filings when appropriate,” sources told NBC News.
McCotter cited the requirement in President Donald Trump’s September 29 executive order that the new term be used “to the maximum extent permitted by law” and said the policy extends to attorney filings in court, Bloomberg Law reported. Citing the order, he wrote that “terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of extraordinary technologies being pioneered by American innovators.” Bloomberg Law described the order as part of Trump’s effort to counter increasingly negative public perceptions of the technology.
The memo implements Executive Order 14434, “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence,” which the Federal Register published on October 2. It directs agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents within the executive branch. The order does not require changes to previously issued regulations, contracts, grants or other historical documents, and for now it defines the new terms as the technologies covered by the existing statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3). It gives the president’s science and technology adviser 60 days to propose legislative language for a federal definition.
Department officials were already using the language last week. An October 1 Justice Department release announcing smuggling charges described export-controlled servers containing GPUs “commonly used for Super Intelligence (SI) applications” and quoted Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg: “SI is the defining technology of the era.”
Trump told the UN General Assembly in September that the government would drop “artificial intelligence” for “super intelligence” in official communications. He has since named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to lead a new Super Intelligence Force.
Sources
- NBC News: Justice Department tells employees to adopt Trump’s AI rebrand (October 6, 2026)
- Bloomberg Law: DOJ Staff Must Refer to AI as ‘Super Intelligence’ in Court (October 6, 2026)
- Federal Register: Executive Order 14434, Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence (October 2, 2026)
- The White House: Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence (September 29, 2026)
- U.S. Department of Justice: California Man Arrested for Smuggling More Than $300 Million in Export-Controlled Computer Servers to China (October 1, 2026)
- U.S. Department of Justice: Meet the Acting Deputy Attorney General