Governor Moore Outlines AI Framework to Protect Marylanders

ANNAPOLIS, MD –Governor Moore today announced a new AI framework outlining his administration’s core principles — centered on Maryland communities, workers, and children — for the responsible development, deployment, and regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), and for equipping Maryland’s workforce to thrive alongside it. In the absence of federal guardrails around this rapidly developing technology, Governor Moore’s AI principles are grounded in safeguards to mitigate the risks of AI, while ensuring the technology serves the people of Maryland.

The agenda outlines three guiding principles: 

1. Protecting our people:Marylanders deserve protection from new and emerging threats — to their rights and safety, and to our infrastructure, our democracy, and our economy. 
2. Centering our workers:Workers and the unions that represent them deserve a voice in how AI affects them — along with high-quality, worker-centered training and real transition support.
3. Keeping our kids safe:Maryland’s children must be protected from exploitation and harm.

“With the speed with which AI is moving, Marylanders deserve guardrails that safeguard their rights, privacy, and dignity,”said Gov. Moore. “This technology is already here, and we believe Maryland is the best state in the country to benefit from the promise of AI responsibly – but we can’t afford to wait while Washington sits on their hands. These core principles will guide our every action to protect our people, center our workers, and keep our kids safe.” 

To protect Marylanders from new and emerging threats to their rights and safety, the 

Moore-Miller administration is taking action to: 

• Regulate frontier AI companies,with the AI Subcabinet, in consultation with key stakeholders, developing legislative recommendations for regulating frontier AI model companies — including safety frameworks and testing, worker protections, independent third-party audits and evaluations, whistleblower protections, public reporting, and 72-hour incident reporting. 
• Recognize your likeness as a property right,by establishing a statutory Right of Publicity. Under current law, an individual whose likeness is cloned must prove harm to seek any relief; the Right of Publicity would establish ownership from the outset.
• Provide guidance across housing, lending, and employment,by directing the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights (MCCR) and the relevant financial, housing, and labor regulators to ensure that affected Marylanders know that existing civil rights, consumer protection, housing, and lending laws already reach AI-driven decisions.
• Rein in discriminatory housing algorithms,with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) working to prohibit algorithmic tenant-screening tools that discriminate based on  protected characteristics in properties that receive rental housing financing from the Department.
• Stop algorithmic rent collusion, by working with the legislature to prohibit landlords from using shared pricing platforms to coordinate rents based on non-public competitor data, a practice that can drive up housing costs across the market.
• Protect at-risk gamblers, by working with the legislature to bar gambling operators from using algorithmic and other means to identify and target users showing problem-gambling patterns, and to restrict late-night and post-loss wager solicitations.
• Fill the federal gap on workplace AI,with MCCR and the Department of Labor — and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and Department of Information Technology (DoIT) for State workers — issuing guidance explaining how existing discrimination laws apply when AI is involved. 

AI adoption should augment the work of Marylanders, improve job quality and services, and protect workers’ dignity, safety, and right to organize. To protect workers and union voices in the AI economy, the Moore-Miller administration is taking action to ensure that workers are engaged in the process of technological transformation:

• Create a standing Labor-Management Committee, which, along with the Department of Budget and Management, the AI Subcabinet, and relevant State agencies, will ensure strong engagement with unions representing State workers on the impact of AI on workers.
• Ensure workers across Maryland have similar protections, by working with the legislature and key stakeholders to ensure that the most concerning potential aspects of AI for workers – e.g. social scoring, tracking to undermine worker organizing, systemic bias – are appropriately regulated.  
• Convene on worker transition by bringing together unions, businesses, and higher education institutions to examine how AI is reshaping Maryland’s workforce and to develop shared recommendations for building worker resilience and supporting workers as jobs and skills needs change. 
• Continue to invest in reskilling and upskilling across both the state workforce and the broader Maryland workforce, so that Marylanders stay current as AI evolves and can also build skills in other in-demand fields, deepening the training partnerships, registered apprenticeships, and clinics already in place.
• Support from school to career,strengthening education, training, and career transition pathways so all Marylanders can build durable skills and navigate changes in the labor market.

To protect our children from harm and exploitation, the Moore-Miller administration is taking action to:  

• Protect young people from unsafe chatbots,strengthening protections related to chatbot use.
• Curb addictive design, working with the Attorney General, the legislature and other states to ensure social media platforms are not using artificial intelligence and algorithmic design features to drive addictive and harmful engagement among users under 16.
• Extend Maryland’s crisis-response safety net into the classroom, working with the Maryland State Department of Education and the legislature to require schools to implement protocol for any AI tool a student interacts with at school.
• Implement a “do no harm” policy for AI use in schools,working with districts and educators, to ensure that any AI tools in classrooms have demonstrated outcomes for student learning, are supplementing educator instruction, and that families are informed before use.
• Ensure our students are ready for an AI-shaped world,with the Maryland State Department of Education working with districts and educators to issue model K-12 lesson plans that help students understand what AI is and is not, make safe and ethical choices, and prepare for what’s ahead. 

Governor Moore’s agenda builds off the standards outlined in his 2024 Executive Order,the Artificial Intelligence Governance Act of 2024, and the State of Maryland’s Responsible AI Policy. 

It also builds on a track record of legislation addressing AI risks. Maryland has acted to protect Marylanders from deepfakes — safeguarding elections (SB 141), giving victims of AI-generated intimate images legal recourse (SB 360), and criminalizing AI impersonation (SB 8) — to ensure that final insurance coverage decisions are made by qualified doctors rather than algorithms (HB 820), and to protect children online and in the classroom through theAge-Appropriate Design Code Act and theArtificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act. As co-chair of the National Governors Association’s Council of Governors’ Cyber Subcommittee, Governor Moore is also focused on the risk AI poses to critical infrastructure, pressing for stronger state-federal coordination to defend the power, water, transportation, healthcare, financial, agricultural, chemical, and communications systems Marylanders depend on. 

The administration is equally focused on ensuring Marylanders share in AI’s gains. This year, Governor Moore announced a partnership withRAISE US — a national initiative helping workers adapt to and thrive in an AI-driven economy — to prepare Maryland workers, employers, and community organizations for a future shaped by AI and emerging technologies. That builds on a$4 million investment, administered by the Maryland Department of Labor, to expand hands-on training in Maryland’s lighthouse industries and strengthen local cybersecurity initiatives. 

Taken together, these actions position Maryland to lead — setting a standard for how states can harness AI’s promise while protecting their people from its risks. As Washington stalls, Maryland is choosing to act, ensuring that this technology serves Marylanders rather than the other way around.