Tampa Bay Times: It’s time for AI-enabling legislation, not just restrictive regulations

As we reflect on the recent third anniversary of OpenAI’s ChatGPT release, it’s fair to say that artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence technologies have become nearly ubiquitous in our daily lives. Yet state and federal legislators have been slow to bring AI-enabling legislation to regulatory conversations.

For the U.S. to remain globally competitive, we need more legislation that incentivizes responsible AI innovation, not just restrictive and risk-mitigating regulations.

The president has been clear that he wants a single, uniform federal standard so that AI developers can scale their technologies without facing a “patchwork” of 50 different state laws.

Despite the president’s intent, the clear message from state legislatures is that particular aspects of AI regulation necessarily must fall to state legislation. This is why state legislatures need to develop enabling and incentivizing legislation — not only to promote responsible AI innovation but also to actively encourage it within the context of individual state needs and resources.

Three years ago, only a limited number of AI-focused bills had been introduced at the state and federal levels. Now all 50 states; Puerto Rico; Washington, D.C.; and the U.S. Virgin Islands have bills related to AI and GenAI. More than 1,080 AI-related bills were introduced across all state legislatures in the 2025 legislative session alone. Despite this high volume, only about 118 bills were enacted, most of which focused on consumer safety, including matters of data privacy, discrimination and transparency.