UF students aim to create a first-of-its-kind public dashboard to track statewide AI rulemaking

The future of AI regulation isn't being decided in a boardroom; it’s being mapped in a classroom.

At the University of Florida Public Utility Research Center in the Warrington College of Business, undergraduate students are using AI to track more than 1,000 new laws attempting to govern the technology — setting the foundation for a first-of-its-kind public dashboard that will pull these complex laws out of statehouses and put them directly into the hands of citizens.

This is critical timing, considering legislatures passed 100 new laws in 38 states in 2025 alone, UF research showed.

“Our research provides a structured overview of what states are attempting, what types of bills are passing and where regulatory momentum is concentrated,” said undergraduate student Fátima Palacios Figueroa, who is leading the UF research team. “In a rapidly evolving policy landscape, having an organized taxonomy of state legislation is especially valuable for informed decision making.”

The research was born out of UF’s Project Navigate, a student-led initiative designed to examine how digitization is reshaping government and business. UF researchers can now offer clarity to state legislators, policymakers, regulatory agencies and policy analysts looking to other states to make decisions. Currently, state legislatures are focusing AI legislation on five themes: public-sector governance, consumer protection, transparency/labeling, child safety and biometrics/deepfakes.

“Rather than regulating algorithm development or model architecture, the vast majority of bills focused on the application of existing AI systems,” Palacios Figueroa said. “This suggests that states are currently focused more on how AI is used than on how it is built.”

The team found the most prominent theme of the legislation to be public-sector governance, with approximately 20% of AI-related bills in 2025 (a total of 223) focused on how government agencies procure, deploy and oversee AI systems. There was then a steep decline to the second most prominent theme, consumer protection, which included 113 bills addressing areas such as housing, health care, fraud and advertising.

“More broadly, the pattern suggests that states are prioritizing public benefits while managing risks,” Palacios Figueroa said. “States appear to regulate where enforcement is feasible and public understanding is high — including regulations on deepfakes, health care and fraud — while simultaneously tightening oversight on their own AI use.”

Now that their research is public, the five UF undergraduate students — including Palacios Figueroa, Andrew Domonkos, Alejandra Pacheco, Aidan Bryant and Ian Mayhood — plan to develop an interactive dashboard that will allow the public and policymakers to filter AI legislation by theme, state and regulatory mechanism.

The team used AI platforms like Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to streamline data analysis from the National Conference of State Legislatures’ AI Legislation Database. After compiling that data, the team used Tableau to create heat maps on the five most prominent themes.

Mark A. Jamison, Ph.D., who serves as the director of the Public Utility Research Center, worked directly with the team, offering guidance, outlining goals and helping the students understand how to craft quality research.

“These students are on the cutting edge of how people are thinking about AI governance,” Jamison said. “With the threat of federal preemption on AI regulation, there is a premium on states considering carefully the value of state-specific action.”

The students’ research was featured by the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank followed by members of Congress. Beyond this research, students at the Public Utility Research Center are leading similar projects to understand AI regulation at a global level.

“Earlier projects examined the impacts of European regulations on digital businesses and the implications of algorithm-driven business decision making,” Jamison said. “Our next step is to examine governance of agentic AI.”