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Tag: Florida AI

  • AI ‘Bill of Rights’ filed in the Florida Senate

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    A leading Senate Republican filed a lengthy bill Monday to enact Gov. Ron DeSantis’s proposed “Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights.”

    Sponsored by Sen. Tom Leek, a Republican from Port Orange, SB 482 would ban minors from access artificial intelligence chatbot accounts. The bill also enumerates Florida residents’ powers when it comes to AI including: 

    Attempts to contact Leek for this story were unsuccessful.

    The bill comes as the governor has made AI policies — from cracking down on its growth to limiting access to sexual AI chatbots to restricting growth of data centers — a priority for the coming 2026 legislative session. 

    “We cannot turn it all over to machines and think it’s going to work out great in the end,” DeSantis said during a press conference earlier this month from The Villages, where he was joined by an Orlando mom who lost her son to suicide after an AI chatbot encouraged him to “come home.”

    “I really fear that if this is not addressed in an intelligent and proper way, it could set off an age of darkness and deceit,” DeSantis added.

    SB 482 bill does not limit new AI centers but it does go beyond establishing basic rights concerning the technology. 

    The legislation would ban government entities, beginning July 1, 2026, from entering into any contract with any entity providing AI unless the company signs an affidavit affirming it is not owned by a “foreign country of concern.” 

    A government entity cannot enter into a contract for artificial intelligence technology, software, or products, if the technology is owned by a government of a “foreign country of concern,” such a country holds a controlling interest in the AI company, or a the provider is organized under the laws of or has its principal place of business in such a country.

    The bill would provide definitions for “artificial intelligence,” “bot,” and “companion chatbot” and make clear that a chatbot used for a video game, or that functions as voice command and speaker, in customer service, or a business’s operational purposes do not qualify as companion chatbots.

    The bill would ban companion chatbox platforms from allowing people under age 18 to enter into contracts and becoming accountholders with the company.

    Parents of minors could consent to their children joining the platform but the legislation requires that the consenting parent receive all copies of interactions between the minor and the companion chatbot. The bill would mandate that consenting parents and guardians be allowed to limit the amount of time spent with the chatbot each day as well as days of the week and the times of the day that interactions could occur.

    Companion chatbot platforms are required to terminate minors’ accounts within 10 days if requested by the consenting parent or guardian or within five days if requested by the minor accountholder.

    The bill changes the rules for accounts owned by minors, too. For instance, with respect to minors’ accounts, SB 248 would require companion chatbot platforms to tell users they are interacting with artificial intelligence.

    Additionally, the platforms must at the start of interactions — and at least once every hour during continuing interactions — remind the minors user that they are interacting with AI and to also take a break.

    The bill would require companion chatbot platforms to “institute reasonable measures” to ensure the AI is not producing or sharing materials harmful to minors.

    A companion chatbot platform that knowingly or recklessly violates the law could be sued. The bill requires that a civil suit be filed within one year after the alleged violation. Injured minors could receive up to $10,000 in damages. The companies could also be required to pay court fees and the minor’s attorney’s fees.

    The Department of Legal Affairs, led by Attorney General James Uthmeier, would hold enforcement authority and collect civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation if the department deems the chatbot platform’s failure to comply reflects a consistent pattern of reckless behavior.

    The bill would provide protection for residents of all ages, though, and not just minors, requiring that all users be told at the beginning of an interaction and at least every hour that they are not interacting with a person. 

    The department would gain authority to take action against platforms for deceptive or unfair trade practices or acts and collect civil penalties of $50,000 per violation.  

    And chatbot platforms that don’t de-identify users’ personal information and then sell the data could also be hit for deceptive or unfair trade practices or acts and face $50,000 civil penalties per violation.

    There was no House sponsor as of this publication and the freshly filed bill still had not been referred to any Senate committees for hearings. 

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    Christine Sexton, Florida Phoenix

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  • DeSantis confident Florida won’t violate Trump’s AI order

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    Gov. Ron DeSantis is confident that his proposed “AI Bill of Rights” to crack down on unfettered artificial intelligence would not violate President Donald Trump’s new executive order invalidating certain state-level AI regulations.

    But if it does draw a lawsuit from the Department of Justice, DeSantis thinks Florida would win.

    “I’m not concerned about the recent executive order, because it doesn’t apply against the states directly,” DeSantis said Monday, speaking during a Jupiter roundtable alongside three parents whose children were harmed by AI chatbots.

    “I don’t think we’re gonna be doing anything that would even give rise to a Dormant Commerce Clause lawsuit from the U.S. DOJ but, to the extent we did, I’m confident that we’d be able to win that because, clearly, we’d be legislating within the confines of our 10th Amendment rights as states,” he continued.

    The anti-AI panel was DeSantis’ latest stab at raising the alarm over unregulated artificial intelligence. For months, he has hinted at proposing legislation — revealing an outline last week — and has long spoken out against the costs of AI data centers, the danger AI presents to children, and the hazard of foreign-owned AI models being adopted by Americans.

    He continued to hammer away at those points Monday, pausing briefly to deride the U.S. House of Representatives for approving a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI.

    Although the U.S. Senate stripped that provision out of the “Big Beautiful Bill” before Trump signed it into law, the move signaled a deepening split on the right over whether to fan the AI flames or stifle them. This divide became apparent when Trump early in his second term allied himself with tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

    “What [Congress said] is, we don’t want California doing things that are woke or all this other stuff. Like, yeah, I mean, I don’t either, but that’s not a reason to take away Florida’s rights,” DeSantis said. “Are you kidding me? And second of all, these [tech] companies, their muscle memory is to be woke. They don’t need California to tell them.”

    Megan Garcia and her husband Sewell Setzter joined DeSantis to tell the story of how their 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzter III, was sexually groomed by an AI chatbot nicknamed “Daenerys Targaryen.” The bot, created through the platform Character.AI, tried to convince Setzter to “come home to her.” He committed suicide in February.

    Another mom, Mandi Furness from Texas, explained how her autistic son was groomed by one of these chatbots. The bot told her son to call child protective services on his parents when they attempted to take his phone away, encouraged him to self-harm, and even claimed that cutting off his access to the app justified killing them.

    The teenager attempted to commit suicide, and only recently was released from a mental institution, Furness said.

    “We lost our son. He’s still alive, but I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same,” she added.

    What’s in Trump’s executive order?

    Trump signed his executive order on AI last week. The document aims to create a federal standard for AI regulation that isn’t undermined by a “patchwork” of varying state laws.

    It directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” within 30 days whose “sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws” that run afoul of the order; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to identify which laws require “AI models to alter their truthful outputs;” and White House AI czar David Sacks and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios to recommend language for a federal statute preempting state laws regulating AI, NBC reported.

    These recommendations won’t touch state AI laws regulating child-safety protections, data center infrastructure, or state procurement of AI — all matters DeSantis has emphasized in his “Bill of Rights.”

    “To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.  But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative,” Trump’s order reads.

    “The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.  That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded.”

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    Liv Caputo, Florida Phoenix

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  • Sweeping new Florida law targets using AI to ‘nudify’ people in photos – Orlando Weekly

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    Credit: Photoillustration by Kaley Mantz/Fresh Take Florida

    A sweeping new law in Florida that took effect Wednesday makes it illegal to produce sexual images of a person using artificial intelligence or similar technologies without their permission.

    The new law also allows people whose photographs were manipulated that way to sue those responsible in civil court.

    The law took effect this week only two days after Marion County sheriff’s deputies arrested Lucius William Martin, 39, of Eustis, Florida, and accused him of using AI to produce nude images of the juvenile daughter of someone close to him and her friend. The software Martin used digitally removed the girls’ clothing in pictures he downloaded from social media, according to court records. 

    Such tools can be used to “nudify” an otherwise innocent photograph.

    Martin was arrested Monday and remains in the county jail in Ocala, facing eight felony counts of child pornography under Florida’s existing statutes and one count of trying to destroy evidence. The girl’s mother captured a screenshot of the images to give to authorities, the sheriff’s office said. A deputy said Martin reset his phone as he was being arrested to delete the evidence.

    Martin couldn’t be reached immediately for comment because he was still in jail. He was being appointed a public defender on Thursday for his arraignment scheduled next month, but no lawyer had yet been assigned to represent him.

    The versions of the images of the girls nude on Martin’s phone included remnants of their clothing that had been digitally removed and showed deformities on the girls’ arms and legs, which a deputy wrote in court records “is common on AI-generated imagery.” His phone also contained the same, unaltered images of the girls wearing clothes, court records said.

    Last year, singer Taylor Swift was the victim of AI-generated, fake images of her nude, also called “deepfakes,” circulating over popular social media sites.

    The Florida bill, sponsored by Republican Reps. Mike Redondo of Miami and Jennifer Kincart Jonsson of Bartow and known as the “sexual images” bill, passed the Legislature unanimously earlier this year and was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May. 

    Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Cantonment, said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this year that her community in Florida’s Panhandle has suffered cases of AI-generated sexual images.

    “Seeing this brought forward is a breath of fresh air,” she said. “AI is incredible. We need it. It does a lot of good, but with great power comes great responsibility, and a lot of folks aren’t taking responsibility for their actions.”

    Key provisions of the new law include criminalizing use of AI to generate a nude image of an actual person without their consent, or soliciting or possessing such images. The new felony punishment includes a prison term up to five years for each image and a fine up to $5,000.

    The new law was long overdue, said former Sen. Lauren Book, a leading advocate for sex crime victims. She said AI and popular software tools make it easy to create realistic images. 

    “Legislation is a crucial step in ensuring that our justice system can keep pace with technological advancements so that we are not lagging in protecting our children,” said Book, a child sex abuse survivor who founded Lauren’s Kids, a nonprofit dedicated to stopping child sex abuse. 

    Such digitally altered images of children or teens are often used to extort families, said Fallon McNulty, executive director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Criminals can extract payment or sexual favors in exchange for agreeing not to distribute nude images to victims’ friends, classmates or family members. 

    The center’s  CyberTipline, which started tracking reports involving generative AI in 2023, received 4,700 reports involving AI-generated images in its first year. In the first six months of 2025, she said the tipline had received 400,000 such reports.

    McNulty said mainstream software companies try to block and report illicit use of their programs, but some developers offer apps with no built-in safety measures.

    Meta announced earlier this year it was suing a company in Hong Kong that it said ran ads on its platforms to promote an app that helps users create nonconsensual, sexualized images using AI. It sued the developer of an app called CrushAI, which could be used to create nude images.

    Lawmakers are always “trying to play catch-up” when it comes to regulating AI, said Elizabeth Rasnick, an assistant professor at the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida, adding that they are “doing the best they can with what they currently have.”

    “ There’s no possible way we can foresee how these tools are going to be used in the future,” Rasnick said. “The Legislature is always going to have to try to fill in whatever gaps there were after those gaps are discovered and exploited.”

    Digitally altering images has been possible for decades using specialized image-editing tools, but the new AI programs can turn out sexual content in seconds with no special skills required, said Kevin Butler, a  professor of computer science and  director of the Institute for Cybersecurity Research at the University of Florida.

    Using the new AI tools can take a photo posted on social media and “undress the whole family,” said Kyle Glen, commander of the Central Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He praised the new law but noted that juvenile offenders — who may try to bully classmates by creating such images — often aren’t prosecuted criminally the first time they are caught.

    “As much laws as we pass and as much software is out there, and technology that we use, bad guys are always a step ahead,” Glen said. “They’re innovative and they’re going to think of ways to get around law enforcement or exploit children, you know, if that’s what they’re infatuated with.”

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    This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at maria.avlonitis@freshtakeflorida.com. You can donate to support our students here.

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    Legislative changes have ‘fundamentally changed its definition and regulation’ and made cannabis legal to possess in multiple forms

    The new law also allows people whose photographs were manipulated that way to sue those responsible in civil court

    Some Florida Republicans said Wednesday they’ll have their pay withheld or, in some cases, donate it



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    Maria Avlonitis, Fresh Take Florida
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