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First lady Melania Trump on Tuesday announced an artificial intelligence contest for K-12 students nationwide.
“Are you ready for an AI challenge? Take part in this nationwide initiative to discover, develop and expand AI’s potential,” she said in the video announcement.
For the challenge, student participants must complete a project that involves the study, development or use of an AI method or tool to address a community challenge. The contest also invites educators to come up with new and creative approaches to teaching with AI.
“As someone who created an AI-powered audio book and championed online safety through the Take It Down Act, I’ve seen firsthand the promise of this powerful technology,” she said, referencing the audio book version of her 2024 memoir, “Melania,” which was narrated by an AI-generated version of her voice.
The first lady encouraged those eligible to apply online to compete in the challenge online. (An educator or supervising adult must complete and submit a form for each team to participate.)
In his Cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Donald Trump drew attention to his wife’s initiative and directed the public to the new AI.gov website. The site says, “Early training in the responsible use of AI tools will demystify this technology and prepare America’s students to be confident participants in the AI-assisted workforce, propelling our Nation to new heights of scientific innovation and economic achievement.”
The president’s personal embrace of AI, by contrast, has been less focused on “scientific innovation and economic achievement” than on trolling his political rivals and visualizing retribution. As internet culture reporter Steven Asarch wrote for MSNBC:
There’s a term for someone using social media this way that can’t be repeated in polite company, so let’s just call it slop-posting. ... Even in the most harmless AI-generated memes, Trump is muddying the waters on what is real, encouraging his supporters to believe everything and nothing. Did a woman in a bikini really catch a snake? Is Obama really going to be arrested? To a Trump supporter steeped in these memes, the answer may not even matter.
The announcement came on the same day that a new study reported that AI-powered chatbots are “inconsistent” in how they deal with prompts related to queries about suicide.