Gov. Ron DeSantis is confident that his proposed “AI Bill of Rights” to crack down on unfettered artificial intelligence would not violate President Donald Trump’s new executive order invalidating certain state-level AI regulations.
But if it does draw a lawsuit from the Department of Justice, DeSantis thinks Florida would win.
“I’m not concerned about the recent executive order, because it doesn’t apply against the states directly,” DeSantis said Monday, speaking during a Jupiter roundtable alongside three parents whose children were harmed by AI chatbots.
“I don’t think we’re gonna be doing anything that would even give rise to a Dormant Commerce Clause lawsuit from the U.S. DOJ but, to the extent we did, I’m confident that we’d be able to win that because, clearly, we’d be legislating within the confines of our 10th Amendment rights as states,” he continued.
The anti-AI panel was DeSantis’ latest stab at raising the alarm over unregulated artificial intelligence. For months, he has hinted at proposing legislation — revealing an outline last week — and has long spoken out against the costs of AI data centers, the danger AI presents to children, and the hazard of foreign-owned AI models being adopted by Americans.
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He continued to hammer away at those points Monday, pausing briefly to deride the U.S. House of Representatives for approving a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI.
Although the U.S. Senate stripped that provision out of the “Big Beautiful Bill” before Trump signed it into law, the move signaled a deepening split on the right over whether to fan the AI flames or stifle them. This divide became apparent when Trump early in his second term allied himself with tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
“What [Congress said] is, we don’t want California doing things that are woke or all this other stuff. Like, yeah, I mean, I don’t either, but that’s not a reason to take away Florida’s rights,” DeSantis said. “Are you kidding me? And second of all, these [tech] companies, their muscle memory is to be woke. They don’t need California to tell them.”
Megan Garcia and her husband Sewell Setzter joined DeSantis to tell the story of how their 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzter III, was sexually groomed by an AI chatbot nicknamed “Daenerys Targaryen.” The bot, created through the platform Character.AI, tried to convince Setzter to “come home to her.” He committed suicide in February.
Another mom, Mandi Furness from Texas, explained how her autistic son was groomed by one of these chatbots. The bot told her son to call child protective services on his parents when they attempted to take his phone away, encouraged him to self-harm, and even claimed that cutting off his access to the app justified killing them.
The teenager attempted to commit suicide, and only recently was released from a mental institution, Furness said.
“We lost our son. He’s still alive, but I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same,” she added.
What’s in Trump’s executive order?Trump signed his executive order on AI last week. The document aims to create a federal standard for AI regulation that isn’t undermined by a “patchwork” of varying state laws.
It directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” within 30 days whose “sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws” that run afoul of the order; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to identify which laws require “AI models to alter their truthful outputs;” and White House AI czar David Sacks and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios to recommend language for a federal statute preempting state laws regulating AI, NBC reported.
These recommendations won’t touch state AI laws regulating child-safety protections, data center infrastructure, or state procurement of AI — all matters DeSantis has emphasized in his “Bill of Rights.”
“To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation. But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative,” Trump’s order reads.
“The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order. That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded.”
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