The Florida House of Representatives’ final committee week featured their inaugural “AI week” following a directive from the Speaker of the House to examine artificial intelligence across every major sector. The week tucked neatly between two of Governor DeSantis’s press conferences on his forthcoming AI Bill of Rights and the Trump Administration’s new executive order focused on removing barriers to AI development, signed last Thursday.
All three of these developments featured a litany of ideas, shaped by underlying attitudes about the technology and the respective role of each institution in executing that vision. The content of AI Week, however, centered on a more practical question: how can Florida set clear guardrails for consumers while maintaining room for the private and public sectors to develop and adopt the technology? Leo Schoonover, Chief Information Officer at the Department of Health, set the tone early in an IT Budget & Policy Subcommittee meeting by urging the state to “set the floor, not the ceiling”.
Schoonover has reason to be confident. Over the past few years, Florida has already set a strong “floor” of accountability for AI, in some cases without even trying. Witnesses repeatedly noted that Florida’s existing legal framework already addresses many of the concerns people have about artificial intelligence. This is largely because preexisting laws tend to be process-neutral, providing penalties for harmful outcomes regardless of the tool or technology used.
Consider Florida’s protections against unauthorized commercial use of someone’s likeness. The underlying statute dates back to 1967, decades before anyone imagined generative AI. Yet because the law focuses on the harm rather than the method, it applies just as well to an AI-generated image as it does to a photograph. The same logic extends across the legal system. The Florida Bar testified that lawyers who fabricate AI-generated case citations face discipline under ethics rules that have been on the books for decades. Healthcare providers confirmed that physicians remain fully liable for any AI-assisted diagnosis or documentation under existing malpractice standards.
Where the legislature has acted on AI-specific concerns, those efforts have sought to plug potential gaps in existing enforcement where the law might be murky. Since 2022, the legislature repeatedly reaffirmed that willfully promoting an altered sexual depiction of someone without their consent is illegal, most recently with the passage of “Brooke’s Law” last session. In 2024, the legislature passed requirements for political advertisements to include a transparency disclosure when content is created using AI. These bills address specific harms that emerged with new technology while preserving the flexibility that has allowed Florida’s legal system to adapt for decades of innovation. If new harms come about in the future, Florida should use the same process neutral framework when drafting new statutes.
AI Week offered Florida a model for how to approach emerging technology. Legislators heard directly from the agencies, industries, and practitioners who work with these tools every day. That kind of informed deliberation is exactly what good policymaking looks like. The state has built a strong foundation through decades of process-neutral consumer protections, and recent legislation has filled gaps where needed without abandoning that framework. Florida does not need to rush toward sweeping new restrictions to prove it takes AI seriously. The floor is already there.
