The Florida Senate passed a bill to provide consumer protections and safeguards for vulnerable adults and children against the growing threat of artificial intelligence (AI) during the State's Special Legislative Session.
The vote was 37-1, with Sen. Erin Grall (R-Fort Pierce) voting 'No.'
Sen. President Pro Tempore Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) filed the bill (SB-2D) in the Senate.
The bill is a refiled version of an AI bill filed during Florida's Legislative Session in March.
"Artificial intelligence may be new, but this bill is not; the same one we voted for last month, and the principals in the bill are not new either," Brodeur said on the Senate floor.
"Parents should know what their children are using; children should not be manipulated by systems pretending to be human; personal information should not be carelessly sold or exposed; a person's image should not be commercially exploited without consent, and Floridians should be able to trust that technology is serving them, not deceiving them," Brodeur added.
SB-2D, like the last bill, prohibits government entities from renewing or entering into contracts with specific AI technology providers unless they meet new security and compliance standards.
In addition, the bill mandates parental consent for a minor to have an account on a companion chatbox platform. The chatbox must also disclose to the user that it is AI and not human, take a break, and inform the user that it is not human every hour.
Sen. Grall argued the bill weakens protections for parents and for consumers.
"We have been told that it does something, but at the end of the day, the words matter, and when those words do not match up with actual rights that people will have when they are faced with harms, we are doing more harm than good for the people of Florida when they believe that we have taken meaningful action, and we actually haven't," Grall said.
Grall called the parental opt-out in the bill "permissive."
"We are so permissive with the way technology will aggressively attack our children in schools, we have lulled parents into believing that we are actually protecting when we are not," Grall continued. "They rely on what we do. They rely on the words we say and what should be available."
The Florida House, under Speaker Danny "Daniel" Perez (R-Miami), is not expected to take up the bill. Perez indicated as such on the House floor earlier on Tuesday.
The Senate also passed a public records exemption (SB-4D) to SB-2D.
The vote was 33-4.
