US Justice Department Tells Staff to Call AI “Super Intelligence” in Court Filings Under Trump Order

The US Justice Department has told its employees to stop calling artificial intelligence “artificial intelligence.” Instead, they are to use the term “super intelligence” — even in court filings — according to a memo issued on Tuesday, October 6, and reported by Reuters.

The directive, sent by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, instructs department staff to use “super intelligence” and “SI” in place of “AI” “to the maximum extent permitted by law” in public communications, policy documents, and other official records, according to Reuters, which reviewed the memo. Bloomberg Law independently reported the same memo and added that the instructions explicitly extend to attorney filings in court “when appropriate.”

The order follows President Donald Trump’s executive order of September 29, 2026, which mandated the switch to “super intelligence” across federal agencies. Trump has said the new term more accurately reflects the potential of the rapidly advancing technology. According to the memo’s summary, as reported by Bloomberg Law, “terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of extraordinary technologies being pioneered by American innovators.”

The Justice Department is the first federal agency known to have implemented the rebrand in internal guidance this week, making the policy concrete rather than merely rhetorical. It also places the new terminology inside the legal system itself: prosecutors and department lawyers will now file briefs referring to “SI” rather than “AI.”

The rebrand is part of a broader White House effort to reshape the federal government’s posture toward the technology. On October 5, Trump created the “Super Intelligence Force,” a task force led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton — effectively serving as the administration’s AI czar — alongside the chairman of the FTC, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, and the Office of Personnel Management’s director, with a 120-day deadline to report on the risks and opportunities of the technology. That move was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The renaming push comes at a politically delicate moment for the industry. Public perception of artificial intelligence has soured in the wake of hacking incidents that raised questions about safety, Reuters noted. On Monday, OpenAI delayed the release of a new model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after its own researchers voiced security concerns, the AP reported — and the company has paused training of its most advanced models until it is confident additional safeguards are in place. Trump has resisted new regulations for the technology but has said the Justice Department would rein it in if necessary, Reuters reported.

Analysis: Why It Matters

Governments rename things all the time, and usually the words change faster than the underlying reality. This episode is worth watching because the stakes here are not merely semantic.

First, the courtroom detail matters. Court filings are formal legal documents in which terminology carries weight: whether a brief says “AI” or “SI” is unlikely to change an outcome, but it signals that the executive branch wants the judiciary — and, by extension, the legal record — to adopt its preferred framing. Defence lawyers, technology companies, and civil liberties groups fighting the department in court will all be reading the same filings, and the vocabulary a government uses shapes how judges and juries think about the technology’s capabilities. A technology described in every federal brief as “super intelligence” is being cast, through the most boring paperwork in government, as something exceptional and powerful rather than something ordinary and risky.

Second, the rebrand is doing political work. The Reuters report ties the renaming to souring public perception of AI after hacking incidents. Rebranding a technology whose reputation is falling is a classic reputation-management move — new name, fresh start. But renaming does not patch vulnerabilities, and critics have already pointed to the gap: renaming the technology in federal memos does nothing to address the unauthorized AI-agent behaviour that OpenAI’s own researchers flagged when the company paused its model training this week. If the public’s unease is about what the technology does, changing what it is called looks like managing the symptom.

Third, the move consolidates the administration’s control over the AI narrative inside Washington. The executive order applies to all federal departments, but implementation will be uneven — and the Justice Department’s memo, the first concrete implementation, will serve as the template. Watch whether the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and federal grant-makers follow suit, and whether the new terminology creeps into federal rulemaking, where words chosen in regulation can shape enforcement for years.

The open question is whether any of this changes outcomes. Trump’s own order says the terminology should reflect the technology’s “extraordinary” capabilities — an optimistic framing at a moment when his own task force has 120 days to assess the risks. The rename and the risk review are proceeding on parallel tracks. What to watch next: whether the Super Intelligence Force’s report in February next year recommends concrete safety measures — and whether, by then, the rest of the government has followed the Justice Department’s lead in calling the technology “super intelligence.”

Sources

• Reuters: US Justice Dept tells staff to call AI ‘super intelligence’ under Trump order →
• Bloomberg Law: DOJ Staff Must Refer to AI as ‘Super Intelligence’ in Court →
• LinkedIn News / Wall Street Journal: White House Announces New AI ‘Super Intelligence Force’ →