Republicans in Florida again block Ron DeSantis' push to regulate AI - NBC News

Ah, Florida — where the iguanas freeze, the politics don't, and AI regulation goes to die. Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh from his presidential ambitions, wants to regulate artificial intelligence. But his own party in the state House has once again refused to even file the legislation he requested. Not debated, not voted down — simply ignored, as if the bill were a stray dog on the Capitol steps. It's the same song we heard at the federal level we flagged two weeks ago, where the Senate has spent two years not passing comprehensive AI legislation. The message from both parties is clear: AI regulation is someone else's problem, preferably someone in the next state or the next decade.

One wonders what exactly the Florida GOP fears more: AI, or the appearance of doing something about it. Perhaps they're waiting for the models to write the bills themselves — saves on staffing. Or maybe the logic is that if you don't regulate a technology, it can't harm you, a theory that has worked out so well for Florida's property insurance market. The irony is that Florida is ground zero for AI's potential harms: from deepfakes in politics to algorithmically-driven insurance denials. But no, that would require elected officials to understand the technology, a bar too high for a chamber that recently debated whether 'critical race theory' can be sprayed with sunscreen.

So DeSantis, the governor who built a national brand on cultural warfare, finds himself powerless to regulate a technology that could upend his own state's economy. The legislative blockade isn't about principle — it's about a coalition of tech lobbyists, libertarian think tanks, and lawmakers who still think an API is a type of craft beer. Until the costs of inaction become impossible to ignore — or until a deepfake of a state senator starts voting from the grave — expect more of the same. The Suncoast sets on the future, and Florida's lawmakers are too busy threatening Disney to notice.