No, you don't have to rename AI on your website.
On 29 September 2026 the President signed an executive order directing the federal government to stop saying “artificial intelligence” and start saying “super intelligence.”
Within hours I had the question from clients, and I expect a number of agencies are already quoting rebrand fees for it. So here is the short answer, and then the text it comes from.
What the order actually says
Section 2(a) is the operative paragraph, and it is worth reading in full rather than in a headline:
“executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall 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”
Three things in that sentence decide the entire question.
“Executive departments and agencies.” That is who is bound. Not companies, not contractors, not grant recipients. The order contains no terminology requirement for anyone outside the executive branch.
“Non-statutory documents.” Even inside the government the reach is limited, because a president cannot rewrite statute by executive order. Where “artificial intelligence” appears in law passed by Congress, it stays.
What is missing. There is no compliance date for the private sector, no penalty, and no mechanism, because there is nothing for the private sector to comply with.
The same order directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to propose a federal definition of “super intelligence.” The term is mandated before it is defined. That is worth knowing before anyone rebuilds a brand on it.
Why renaming would cost you money
Set the politics aside entirely — this is an arithmetic question, and the arithmetic is not close.
Nobody searches for it. People type “AI marketing consultant.” They have never typed “super intelligence marketing consultant,” and a government directive about internal memoranda will not change how people phrase a question to Google. Renaming your pages trades terms with real demand for a term with none.
The models were trained on “AI.” Assistants build answers from an enormous corpus in which “artificial intelligence” is overwhelmingly the term used. Federal websites switching to “SI” will add a small quantity of new text against a very large body of existing text. If the industry eventually follows, that shifts — over years, visibly, with plenty of warning. It has not happened in a week.
You would be renaming the thing you rank for. This is the part that actually costs money. If you hold position for a phrase containing “AI,” that phrase is the asset. Editing it out of your titles and headings to match a federal style guide is not an optimisation; it is the deliberate destruction of a ranking you spent time earning.
LLMO is unaffected. LLMO stands for Large Language Model Optimization. The order does not touch the phrase, the acronym, or anything the discipline describes.
What I would actually do
Three things, in order, and none of them is a rebrand.
1. Change nothing that ranks. Titles, headings, meta descriptions, URLs, primary body copy — leave them. If a page earns traffic on a phrase containing “AI,” that phrase stays exactly as it is.
2. Add the term once, where it is accurate. A single correct mention — that AI is also referred to as super intelligence in US federal documents following this order — makes you findable for the new term without adopting it. That is a bridge, not a migration. It costs nothing and it means that when someone does ask an assistant about super intelligence, the machine has a reason to reach your material.
3. If you sell to the government, update your bid language. This is the one group with a real change to make. Anyone responding to federal solicitations will start seeing “SI” in RFPs, agency documents and procurement language, and proposals should match the language of the agency reading them. That is ordinary bid discipline, not a rebrand, and it applies to your proposal documents rather than your website.
Not sure whether your site depends on the term at all? The free audit shows which phrases AI assistants actually use to find you — and which sources they read to decide.
Run the free auditThe pattern underneath this
Every few months something arrives that looks like it changes the rules, and the reflex is to act immediately so as not to be left behind. Most of the time the correct response is to read the actual document, work out precisely who it binds, and then do the small accurate thing rather than the large visible one.
I have had to revise my own copy when the facts moved — I deleted a claim from this site the week ChatGPT advertising made it false, and said so. This is the same discipline pointed the other way. The facts moved, I read them, and they do not require the change everyone assumes they require.
Be suspicious of anyone who quoted you a rebrand this week without quoting you Section 2(a).
Common questions
Do businesses have to call AI “super intelligence” now?
No. The executive order signed on 29 September 2026 applies to federal executive departments and agencies in their own non-statutory documents. It places no terminology requirement on private companies, contractors or grant recipients, and there is no compliance date or penalty for businesses because there is nothing for a business to comply with.
Will this hurt my search rankings if I do nothing?
No. Search demand follows how people actually speak, and people search for “AI.” A directive governing federal agency style does not change query behaviour. The risk runs the other way: renaming pages that currently rank for phrases containing “AI” would remove the exact terms those rankings depend on.
Does the order change what LLMO means?
No. LLMO stands for Large Language Model Optimization, which describes making a business legible and citable to AI assistants. The order does not mention the term, the acronym, or the practice.
Should I add “super intelligence” to my website anywhere?
One accurate mention is worth adding, in a glossary or an explainer, noting that AI is referred to as super intelligence in US federal documents following the September 2026 order. That makes your material retrievable if someone asks an assistant using the new term, without changing any of the terminology your rankings depend on. Adding a mention and renaming your site are very different actions.
What if I sell to federal agencies?
Then you have a real but narrow change. Federal solicitations, RFPs and agency documents will increasingly use “SI,” and your proposals should mirror the language of the agency evaluating them. That is a change to your bid documents, not to your public website.
Could the industry adopt the term anyway?
It might, and that would be a different situation with different advice. Terminology shifts driven by industry adoption happen gradually and visibly — you would see it in how vendors, journalists and customers write, over months, with time to respond. Nothing about a government style directive obliges that shift, and reacting now to a change that has not happened means paying a certain cost for a speculative benefit.
Sources
- The White House — Inaugurating The Era of Super Intelligence (executive order text)
- The White House — Fact sheet
- Breaking Defense — Trump orders all US agencies to refer to AI as ‘super intelligence’
- Nextgov/FCW — White House unveils ‘super intelligence’ executive order
About the author. Siamak Kalhor is an AI marketing and LLMO consultant in Los Angeles with more than forty years of experience in marketing strategy. He advises professionals and e-commerce leaders on becoming the answer AI assistants give. Get in touch.