- Melania Trump invites youth in the United States to participate in "The Presidential AI Challenge."
- The national contest is designed to promote AI education — while providing students with opportunities to improve their own communities.
- President Donald Trump called for the contest in an AI-themed executive order.
First lady Melania Trump is challenging American kids to “discover, develop and expand AI’s potential” by competing in a nationwide artificial intelligence contest.
Dubbed the “Presidential AI Challenge,” the contest, which opened for registration this week, is a national challenge inviting K-12 students, educators, mentors and community teams to help solve “real-world problems” in their communities using AI-powered solutions.
“Just as America once led the world into the skies, we are poised to lead again — this time, in the age of AI,” the first lady said in a short video announcing the Presidential AI Challenge.
Trump goes on to say that the AI challenge is designed for students in the United States — from kindergarten to 12th grade — “to unleash their imagination and showcase the spirit of American innovation.”
Student participants are being asked to complete a project that involves the study, development, or use of an AI method or tool to address community challenges, according to the contest’s website.
Meanwhile, educators will focus on creative approaches to teaching or using AI technologies in K-12 learning.
An adult mentor or teacher must sponsor a team — and submissions are due by Jan. 20, 2026. Regional champions will be announced in April, followed by national champions being crowned next June.
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the AI challenge is all about American kids working together to use AI tools to better their own communities.
The contest’s opportunities, Kratsios told Fox News, “are endless.”
Some student teams may utilize AI in their projects to, say, optimize bus routes in their local districts. Others might use AI language models to help identify indigenous plants in their local gardens.
“We want to have American youth plugged in and working on and using AI tools,” said Kratsios, adding that almost any career path in front of today’s youth will likely be leveraged by AI.
Kratsios said the youth challenge will also help allay fears that AI undermines students’ thinking skills. “We want to show that these tools can be used to make good and positive and beneficial impacts to the communities around us.”
AI tools for students, he added, “are not just crutches so you don’t have to do your homework or not have to study for an exam. The answer is you can actually leverage these tools to solve real-world problems and improve the community around you.”
So how will the Presidential AI Challenge work?
For their contest projects, youth and educators conduct research and utilize creative thinking in one of three categories, or tracks.
Track I (Proposal)
Teams create an in-depth proposal for how AI technologies could be applied to address a community challenge. This proposal must address an observed challenge in the student’s community, detail the mechanisms for applying AI technologies, and elaborate on how AI technologies could help address that challenge.
Track II (Technical/implementation)
Teams build a solution with AI technologies that can help address a community challenge. Solutions could take many forms, such as phone apps, websites or processes, with supporting materials showing how people would leverage the technologies and how AI technologies are helpful in addressing that challenge.
Track III (For educators only)
Educator teams create an innovative approach to either 1) teach an AI concept or tool to K-12 students, or 2) explore how AI tools can assist in creating transformative teaching and learning experiences. Educators will develop and produce a video or other digital demonstration of the approach. Educators must follow all school guidance on the use of AI technologies in their classrooms.
“For the Challenge, teams are encouraged to make use of any type of AI technology — such as generative AI, large language models, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, robotics, computer vision, expert systems, decision trees, and neural networks, among others,” according to the contest site.
President Trump’s AI executive order
Calls to establish the Presidential AI Challenge were made last April in President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding the advancement of AI education for American youth.
“To ensure the United States remains a global leader in this technological revolution, we must provide our nation’s youth with opportunities to cultivate the skills and understanding necessary to use and create the next generation of AI technology,” declared the president.
“By fostering AI competency, we will equip our students with the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to adapt to and thrive in an increasingly digital society.”
Early learning and exposure to AI concepts demystifies the technology and sparks curiosity and creativity, added the executive order.
Trump’s directive also called for establishing an AI Education Task Force that would include Kratsios, several Cabinet members and the special adviser for AI and crypto.
The task force is being charged with establishing partnerships with leading AI industry organizations, academic institutions, nonprofit entities and other AI/computer science organizations.
Melania Trump’s continued connection to AI
The first lady’s connection to AI predates the national youth challenge contest.
Earlier this year, President Trump signed into law the Take It Down Act — a measure that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation that Melania Trump helped usher through Congress, The Associated Press reported.
At a signing ceremony, she called the new law a “national victory” that will help protect children from online exploitation, including through the use of AI to make fake images.
“AI and social media are the digital candy for the next generation — sweet, addictive and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children,” she said. “But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs and, sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly.”
The bill makes it a federal crime to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-created “deepfakes,” according to the Associated Press report.
Meanwhile, the first lady’s recently released audiobook of her 2024 memoir “Melania” utilizes an AI-generated replica of her voice as narrator.