As Florida’s 2026 Legislative Session approaches, artificial intelligence is expected to be a major focus among Tallahassee’s policymakers. Driven by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ calls for greater regulation, the legislature has already filed at least 32 bills ranging from embracing the new technology to banning it. But before legislators weigh these proposals, they should review the protections Florida has already put in place.
The House got a head start on the subject during their inaugural AI Week, convening various agencies, industries, and practitioners to discuss how they are approaching the emerging technology. As legislators consider new AI proposals, they would do well to heed the advice of Leo Schoonover, Chief Information Officer at the Department of Health, who urged the state in an early IT Budget & Policy Subcommittee meeting to “set the floor, not the ceiling.”
Schoonover has reason to be confident.
Over the past few years, Florida has set a strong “floor” of accountability for AI, in some cases without even trying. Those who testified before House committees repeatedly noted that Florida’s existing legal framework already addresses many of the concerns people have about AI. This is largely because preexisting laws tend to be process-neutral, providing penalties for harmful outcomes regardless of the tool or technology used.
Whether the technology is a chatbot, image generator, or diagnostic tool, the same accountability principles apply.
Consider the state’s protections against unauthorized commercial use of someone’s likeness. In 1967, long before generative AI was conceivable, lawmakers established penalties for profiting from a person’s identity without consent. While some fear that AI-generated media might evade these restrictions, the original statute focuses on the transgression rather than the method. Unauthorized profiteering remains illegal, whether the image is captured by a camera or generated by an algorithm.
The same accountability principles apply across licensed professional practices. The Florida Bar testified that lawyers who cite AI-hallucinated cases already face disciplinary action under longstanding ethics rules that predate the technology. Similarly, health care providers confirmed that physicians remain fully liable for any incorrect AI-assisted diagnosis or documentation under existing malpractice standards. Physicians, therefore, have strong reason to actively verify AI outputs rather than defer to them without scrutiny. In both professions, existing accountability structures discourage over-reliance without requiring AI-specific regulation.
Where regulatory gaps have arisen, the Legislature has moved to close them. Since 2022, the Legislature has 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 efforts extend the same process-neutral logic to new contexts, keeping the focus on the harm itself rather than the technology used to commit it. If new gray areas arise in the future, Florida can and should apply the same framework when drafting new protections.
AI Week offered Florida a model for approaching novel technologies. 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. Florida has taken Schoonover’s approach without even realizing it. Through decades of process-neutral law, Florida has built a strong floor of consumer protection, while recent legislation has filled gaps where needed.
In the upcoming Session, legislators have a chance to build upon that foundation rather than abandon it. The floor is already there. All that’s left is deciding whether to trust it.
