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Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has called for laws to curb the “very harmful” effects of AI, as he criticised attempts backed by Donald Trump to “kneecap the states and let Big Tech write the rules”.
“We have a responsibility to create a framework so that this technology [is] channelled in a way that benefits the people of the state, benefits our kids, our parents, [and does] not supplant our experience as human beings,” DeSantis, who is seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, said at a policy event on Wednesday.
DeSantis’ comments come just weeks after Trump signed an executive order that threatens to withhold federal funding from states that pass “onerous” AI regulations — a move that was cheered by the industry.
Trump signed the order after his administration twice failed to pass legislation that would ban states from passing their own laws for 10 years, prompting a backlash from Republican leaders in Florida and elsewhere.
DeSantis’ continued defiance is the latest sign of dissent among high-ranking figures in Trump’s party, as Republican lawmakers and governors break with the president over matters such as his immigration crackdown, foreign interventions and attacks on the Federal Reserve.
In his speech on Wednesday, DeSantis hit out at the AI proposals, championed last year by Trump’s AI tsar David Sacks, and a small group of other White House advisers with close ties to the industry.
The Florida governor said those fighting for the moratorium claimed they wanted to work on one federal framework for AI legislation, but “the problem is they weren’t proposing a federal rule”.
“They didn’t have a federal scheme that they were trying to implement that would protect the things that I mentioned,” DeSantis said. “Their policy was to kneecap the states and let Big Tech write the rules.”
In the past two years, Florida has passed AI laws that outlaw artificially-generated sexual images and require disclaimers on political advertisements that use AI. DeSantis is pushing for a sweeping “AI Bill of Rights” that would force AI companies to implement parental controls, restrict the use of personal data by chatbots and give residents more power to block the construction of data centres.
In his remarks, DeSantis praised Trump’s recent call for AI companies to absorb the energy costs of new data centres, and said he believed the executive order would not stop Florida from passing some laws.
But he hit out at the claims made by the AI industry, and amplified by the Trump administration, that the sector should be supported in order for the US to win the technological race with China.
“They say [American AI] could help us maintain and expand our military advantage over other countries such as China. Great, I’m all for it. But AI is also being used to produce chat bots that will sexually groom minors online. Is that something that we want to be supporting?”
“Things that are very core to a free society [are] coming under attack by this AI revolution,” DeSantis added, citing intellectual property violations, chat bots that “sexually groom minors” and instances in which suicides have been blamed in part on interactions with AI models.
