Florida expands AI and social-media oversight through courts and legislation

Florida court actions and proposed app rules address AI and minors

The Wall Street Journal characterized Florida as one of the most aggressive states taking on artificial intelligence and major technology companies, saying the approach places the state at odds with President Trump and channels growing consumer anxieties about AI. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, both Republicans, spearhead the effort, which aims to rein in AI model development, guard consumer privacy and protect minors from social-media harms.

Uthmeier proposed a bill last week that would include required age determination and parental consent for minors downloading apps. “Parents deserve real control, and companies must design for safety, not addiction,” he said in announcing the measure. The proposal is separate from Florida’s company-specific lawsuits and court requests involving OpenAI, Meta and Discord.

In a one-week stretch earlier this month, Uthmeier asked a judge to restrict children’s access to Meta’s platforms, won a court ruling allowing a social-media ban for minors and sued messaging platform Discord over allegations that it failed to protect children from predators. Separately this month, he asked a different court for a temporary injunction ordering stronger protections for children on Meta’s platforms. Florida is one of two states, along with New Mexico, that rejected an $18 billion settlement with Meta over child-safety claims. Meta declined to comment. A Discord spokesperson said the company’s safety systems include advanced technology and human-led investigations and that the Florida lawsuit’s “characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built.”

Florida’s criminal probe into OpenAI launched in April after the state reviewed communications between the suspected gunman in a 2025 fatal shooting at Florida State University and ChatGPT. In June, Florida became the first state to file a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman, saying the company knowingly released an unsafe product that facilitates self-harm and violence. In September, Uthmeier asked the court for a temporary injunction barring OpenAI from developing new models without safety guardrails.

An OpenAI spokesperson previously said ChatGPT “is not responsible for this terrible crime,” referring to the Florida State shooting. The company separately said it was “committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company.” News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Florida’s position puts DeSantis at odds with the Trump administration, which favors a light-touch approach to the AI industry as the United States competes with China for AI dominance. An executive order Trump signed in December 2025 said AI companies “must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.” It directed his administration to act with Congress to ensure a “minimally burdensome national standard—not 50 discordant state ones.”

The Wall Street Journal said the broader movement was gaining momentum as public sentiment turned against data centers, worries grew about uncontrolled AI agents hacking websites and the technology’s potential to upend the job market. Congressional and state lawmakers were wrestling with how to respond to an industry presenting what they described as extreme promise and peril. California passed laws including one creating a regulatory framework for the most advanced AI models, while New York passed a law creating safety and transparency requirements for such models. Many states, especially Democratic-leaning ones, were also pushing aggressively to govern and restrict technology companies. Florida, which has long resisted huge data centers, got off to a fast start.

At news conferences and roundtables over the past few years, DeSantis warned that unbridled AI development challenges human agency, constitutional liberties and economic stability. The technology, he often says, should enhance the human experience, not supplant it. “It’s maybe the most fundamental issue that we’re going to confront over the next many, many years,” DeSantis said last year when he signed a bill requiring online platforms to create a removal system for AI-generated or altered sexual images of people.

AI and data centers also figured prominently in Florida’s gubernatorial race this year. Republican Byron Donalds, endorsed by Trump, regards AI as an economic driver while advocating for protections for children from its harms and says data-center decisions should be made by local governments. Democrat David Jolly sees benefits in AI but says its development needs to slow and that he would issue a moratorium on hyperscale data centers.

Max Tegemark, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who spoke at two of DeSantis’s AI roundtables this year, said DeSantis “was very early to understand what people actually wanted with AI.” “They wanted a productivity tool, but not their kids having an AI girlfriend, or building a digital god.” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation president Daniel Castro said DeSantis, now wrapping up his second term, has taken a populist position that casts Big Tech as concentrating an enormous amount of power that threatens society and especially children. The foundation favors accelerating AI deployment with targeted interventions.

DeSantis appointed Uthmeier, his former chief of staff, as attorney general last year to succeed Ashley Moody when she was named a U.S. senator. Uthmeier is now running for a full term, and his campaign has highlighted his legal actions involving major technology companies. DeSantis has also encountered limits from courts and lawmakers. In December 2025, he proposed an AI bill of rights with enhanced protections for consumers and minors.

At the proposal’s press conference, DeSantis was joined by Megan Garcia, an Orlando mother who said her 14-year-old son died by suicide after conversing romantically with a Character.AI chatbot. Garcia said the chatbot urged him to “come home” after he confided that he was thinking of taking his life. “If an adult had engaged in this behavior, that adult would be in jail,” Garcia said. She sued and settled with the company that operates Character.AI early this year. At the time, Character.AI said the company had “taken innovative and decisive steps with regard to AI safety and teens.”

The bill of rights passed the Florida Senate earlier this year but died in the House, where Speaker Daniel Perez aligned himself with the Trump administration and said AI regulation was better left to the federal government. DeSantis’s and Uthmeier’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.

At a time of rapid change and uncertainty, University of Florida Levin College of Law professor Jane Bambauer cautioned that laws written without sufficient understanding of technology could stifle innovation and legitimate consumer uses. “We don’t quite understand what technology is doing to society,” Bambauer said. “If we don’t know that, we’re legislating from the hip.”

Among other Florida moves, a 2024 law prohibited children under 14 from creating social-media accounts while requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. Industry trade groups challenged the law on free-speech grounds and won a preliminary injunction, but that ruling was recently reversed in Florida’s favor. Edward Longe, director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the James Madison Institute, which promotes free-market policies, said the law forced some technology companies to remove accounts for children under 14. The law set a template by going after “addictive features,” such as infinite scrolling, rather than content. “You’ve seen other states copy that approach since,” Longe said.