The Privacy Advisor · Jedidiah Bracy, IAPP Editorial Director

Digital policy 2024: A year in review with Omer Tene

December 13, 2024·42 min·3 clips

Omer Tene reveals how 2024 matured AI governance from a scramble to concrete contracting and risk assessment practices.

2024 is the frame. The host uses the final weeks of the year to sort through AI governance, location privacy enforcement, children's online safety, and privacy litigation, all landing at once for privacy teams. Tene calls the pace phenomenal. He describes dizzying movement in privacy and AI, then treats the lack of a U.S. AI law as less decisive than the law already on the books. The FTC question gets real attention. Tene points to the April 2023 interagency policy statement from the FTC, CFPB, DOJ, and EEOC as a practical baseline for U.S. AI enforcement. There is no AI exemption. From there, he puts employment, finance, consumer finance, health, and the FTC's Section 5 authority in the same regulatory picture. The federal mood may change. Tene expects the new administration to pull back from rights-focused AI governance around bias and discrimination and put more weight on defense, energy, and infrastructure. China is part of that read. He ties national security, chip production, Taiwan's role, and energy demand to the hard limits around training powerful models. The rights agenda does not disappear. His point is narrower: the federal government may be less eager to lead on bias, discrimination, and similar AI governance fights. The host keeps the conversation tidy without sanding off the tension. By moving from the FTC to recent enforcement patterns, the episode treats agency authority as a live issue, not a chart on a wall. The closing stretch is practical. Tene expects AI law to keep moving because the technology keeps forcing legal adaptation, whatever one administration prefers. Kids remain in the mix. So do data brokers, the app tech industry, and foreign adversary access to data about U.S. persons. The tone is sober. For privacy professionals, 2024 sounds less like a finished policy year than the start of tougher jurisdictional and national security questions.

As heard by us

A sharp 2024 privacy and AI policy recap with useful signals on where U.S. enforcement may head next.

The Privacy Advisor closes 2024 with a useful, policy-heavy conversation with Goodwin partner Omer Tene about privacy, AI governance, and the messy reality of U.S. enforcement.

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Why you'd press play

You want a sharp read on what 2024 changed for privacy and AI policy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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