AI governance in Tampa

The Florida Digital Bill of Rights and the political-advertising rule in section 106.145 both took effect on July 1, 2024. A Florida consumer can opt out of profiling in furtherance of a decision that produces a legal or similarly significant effect. Profiling, for this statute, is any solely automated processing used to evaluate or predict economic situation, health, preferences, reliability, behavior, or location.

Only a controller owes that opt-out. A controller is a for-profit entity with more than $1 billion in global gross annual revenue that also meets one of three further tests: over 50 percent of revenue from online advertising, a consumer smart speaker with a cloud virtual assistant, or an app store with at least 250,000 applications. Together those tests describe a handful of technology platforms. A hospital system, a regional insurer, a hotel group, or a terminal operator is not what they describe. Consent to process sensitive data is a separate requirement, and it reaches more businesses than the controller provisions do. That consent rule is the wider privacy fact. It is neither the profiling opt-out nor an AI-governance statute.

Each violation of the privacy statute can be penalized by as much as $50,000. The amount triples if the violation involves a Florida consumer who is a known child, if personal data is not deleted or corrected after an authenticated request, or if the business keeps selling or sharing personal data after an opt-out. The statute allows a 45-day cure period after written notice, except for a violation involving a known child. A consumer is not given a private lawsuit under this statute.

On June 1, 2026 the Attorney General filed an 83-page civil complaint, the first state-led suit of its kind against an AI developer. The pleaded counts are the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, negligence, gross negligence, strict product liability, fraudulent misrepresentation, and public nuisance. The relief sought includes civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, injunctive relief, damages, and disgorgement. A separate criminal investigation was announced on April 21, 2026. The civil theory is consumer deception and product safety. It is not an AI-specific regulation, which is why the pleading does not need an AI statute.

The Florida-specific exposure that changes day-to-day behavior is the marketing claim. Do not describe an AI system to a Florida consumer or patient in terms the testing does not support. That is a deceptive-practices question, and it applies to any business. It does not create an inventory duty, and it does not create a human-review mandate.

Two sector bills died on March 13, 2026. SB 146 would have directed the Florida Digital Service to study how state agencies use AI, and it died in committee. HB 281 would have restricted AI in psychological, clinical, counseling, and therapy services, and it died in the Health Professions & Programs Subcommittee. Florida has no statute governing AI in clinical care, in utilization review, in claims adjudication, or in state-agency procurement. A utilization-review tool at a Tampa payer is not under a Florida AI rule.

The AI-adjacent enactment of 2026 regulates buildings and utility load, not models. CS/CS/SB 484 was signed on May 7, 2026 and took effect on July 1, 2026. It addresses large-load utility service and water permitting for large-scale data centers, it preserves local land-use authority, and it orders a study of data-center construction and operations. It does not regulate AI systems, models, or deployments. The Senate has now passed an Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights twice, by wide margins, and the Governor is behind the project. What has stopped it is House leadership. That is a fact about the sessions already held. It is not a statement that the 2027 session will enact the bill.