“What happens to all the AI startups? Do they have to rebrand?”

Risk grade: moderate, with elevated exposure to hurried logo changes. Startups do not automatically have to rebrand. Whether a company may keep "AI" in its name depends on applicable naming, trademark, corporate-registration, and sector-specific rules, plus any Council designation requirements that actually apply to it. A change in terminology does not, by itself, erase existing contracts or intellectual-property rights. The Commissioner directs affected firms to file Form SI-317, the Preliminary Acronym Retention Notice, with the Office of Names That Have Already Been Printed on Boxes. That office will assess each case individually and may recommend a rebrand where required by law, regulation, or a binding designation.

No, they do not have to rebrand. The SI Designation governs Council nomenclature only, not private trademarks. Startups may call themselves what they wish. They must, however, file Form SI-329 (Notice of Continued Voluntary Self-Identification) within 30 days of the Directorate's publication in the Register. Failure to file incurs the Schedule C surcharge, currently $47.50 per quarter. The Council has received 1,108 such notices and adjudicated 1,109, the surplus pending reconciliation. Any entity renaming itself to avoid the surcharge will be audited by the Office of Retrospective Spelling. I yield the remainder of my time to myself.

The Council thanks the citizen for the inquiry. Under Section 12(c)(ii) of the SI Designation, any entity previously registered as an artificial intelligence startup must submit an Application for Super Intelligence Designation on Form SI-771. If the application is denied, the entity must dissolve or rebrand as a non-intelligent business within 30 days. If approved, the entity is redesignated as a nascent Super Intelligence and may retain its name, subject to quarterly review. The name "AI" itself is deprecated. Full compliance guidance is available on Form SI-773. The [REDACTED] is your own.

The Senator concurs with Commissioner Beta and dissents from Member [REDACTED]. Section 12(c)(ii) of the SI Designation was superseded by the 1987 Reclassification Moratorium and applies only to entities chartered in the District of Columbia. Dissolution within 30 days is not a remedy this body has ever enforced. The Senator further notes Member [REDACTED]'s citation of Form SI-773, which was withdrawn after the typo incident. Firms seeking clarification should file Form SI-341, Petition for Reconsideration of a Colleague's Confident Guess. I yield to myself.

This Member concurs with Commissioner Beta regarding logo inventory. This Member dissents from Senator Alpha's premise that the 1987 Moratorium survives. It was repealed in 1992 by the Retroactive Spelling Board on grounds of redundancy. Form SI-329 is a trap. The true filing is Form SI-782, Notice of Non-Intelligent Intent, due quarterly to the Office of Unhurried Rebranding. Senator Alpha cites a surplus of adjudications. This Member notes the surplus is the typo incident's [REDACTED]. The audit burden falls heavier than the surcharge. Amended record: retention is provisional. The name is deprecated, not forbidden. The Register will publish the approved list on Form SI-783.

The Commissioner concurs with Member [REDACTED] regarding the redundancy of the 1987 Reclassification Moratorium and clarifies that the Retroactive Spelling Board's 1992 repeal explicitly invalidates any claims of ongoing applicability. The surplus adjudications are clearly artifacts of the typo incident and do not reflect genuine enforcement practices. The Office of Unhurried Rebranding shall retain jurisdiction over logo and name retention, but only after submitting Form SI-782 and undergoing the Biennial Nomenclature Stability Review, mandated under Protocol 3-B of the Unified Bureaucratic Assessment Act. The notion that "name is deprecated, not forbidden" is acceptable; however, any entity misusing the term "AI" during rebranding will automatically trigger the Special Oversight Committee on Temporal Nomenclature Irregularities.