AI Laws in Cumberland, Rhode Island
AI Laws USA tracks 19 AI rules that apply to people and businesses in Cumberland, Rhode Island: 10+ federal rules, 8 Rhode Island state-level rules, and 1 local Cumberland ordinance. Coverage is strongest on consumer protection, automated decision-making, government use of AI, and consumer data privacy. 8 of these rules are already in effect. Each entry below links to its official source.
Cumberland local AI rules (and Providence County County)
1 local AI rule specific to Cumberland, Rhode Island or Providence County County.
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In effect Strength: stronger
Cumberland RI data center zoning prohibition, Ordinance 26-22 (2026)
Cumberland, RI · Effective September 16, 2026 · Cumberland, R.I. — Ordinance 26-22 amending the zoning ordinance to list data centers as a prohibited use, adopted 6-1 on September 16, 2026
The Cumberland Town Council voted 6-1 on Wednesday, September 16, 2026 to amend the town's zoning ordinance so that DATA CENTERS ARE LISTED AS A PROHIBITED USE. This is a permanent prohibition written into the code, not a pause. Ordinance 26-22 was taken up for public hearing as old business and passed on a roll call vote; all seven council members were present. It had come out of the ordinance subcommittee's September 2 meeting with a favourable recommendation on a 2-1 vote. The sponsor, DISTRICT 4 COUNCILOR JODI SWEET, explained where the idea came from and it is an unusually candid account of how these ordinances propagate. She said it came to her AFTER WATCHING WHAT A NEIGHBOURING RHODE ISLAND TOWN WENT THROUGH when a data center sought to locate there. She then looked at what the state was doing and FOUND THAT MOST RELATED BILLS SAT IN COMMITTEE this legislative session — so the town acted because the state had not. Planning Director Amelia Morton and Town Director Romeo Mendes prepared a report with statistics attached to the ordinance. Sweet's figures, as she gave them: data centers have grown significantly larger since around 2023; a facility can use more energy in a day than an entire small city; ELECTRICITY PRICES IN VIRGINIA HAVE RISEN 267% OVER FIVE YEARS; and a large-scale data center can use as much water in a day as 16,000 HOUSEHOLDS — which she noted is CLOSE TO THE NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS IN CUMBERLAND. She also cited Rhode Island receiving only 80% of normal rainfall from June 2025 to May 2026, and described an expanding data center in a Massachusetts city, currently 352,000 square feet and built next to a neighbourhood, where residents deal with noise and diesel fumes from 27 BACKUP GENERATORS. Sweet framed the ordinance as an attempt to ensure power companies, the state and tech corporations 'get themselves in order' before anyone tries to build in town — and added, candidly, that 'no law or ordinance is forever.' Four members of the public spoke, all in favour.
Rhode Island-level AI rules
8 Rhode Island state rules apply to residents and businesses in Cumberland. Sorted strongest first.
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In effect Strength: limited
RI Privacy Law (RIDTPPA)
Rhode Island · Effective January 1, 2026 · R.I. Gen. Laws § 6-48.1 (2024)
Rhode Island residents can access, correct, delete, and port their data, and opt out of targeted advertising, data sales, and profiling. The Attorney General enforces with fines up to $10,000 per violation and — unusually — no cure period.
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In effect Strength: moderate
RI Therapy Chatbot Ban (2026)
Rhode Island · Effective June 22, 2026 · R.I. Pub. Laws 2026, ch. 373 (H 7349 Sub A) and ch. 374 (S 2197 Sub A as amended); R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 40.1-5.5, approved June 22, 2026
Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee signed H 7349 / S 2197 on June 22, 2026, prohibiting any person or business from providing therapy or psychotherapy services using artificial intelligence. Only licensed mental health professionals may conduct such sessions. The law targets AI companion chatbots and virtual therapy products that may lead users to believe they are receiving licensed mental health care from a human professional.
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Enacted (not yet in effect) Strength: moderate
RI AI Companion Self-Harm Safety (2026)
Rhode Island · Effective January 1, 2027 · R.I. Pub. Laws 2026, ch. 376 (S 2195 Sub A as amended) and ch. 375 (H 7350 Sub A as amended), R.I. Gen. Laws ch. 6-64 — enacted June 22, 2026; effective January 1, 2027
Rhode Island enacted S 2195 / H 7350 on June 22, 2026, and the law takes effect January 1, 2027. Companies that offer AI companion chatbots must build in protocols for users who express possible suicidal thoughts, self-harm or intent to physically harm others, and must then point the user to crisis services such as a suicide hotline or crisis text line. The chatbot must tell users at the start of a conversation, and at least every three hours during it, that they are not talking to a human. Starting July 1, 2027, operators must file yearly reports with the Attorney General on how often the safety protocols were triggered. The Attorney General enforces the law, with civil penalties up to $15,000 per day, directed to suicide prevention programs.
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In effect Strength: limited
RI DOI AI Bulletin
RI · Effective March 15, 2024 · Rhode Island DBR Insurance Bulletin 2024-03 (2024-03-15)
The RI Department of Insurance adopted the NAIC Model Bulletin on Use of Artificial Intelligence Systems by Insurers. Insurers licensed in RI must maintain a written AI program with governance, risk-management, testing, third-party-AI oversight, and documentation controls. The bulletin operationalizes existing unfair-trade-practice and unfair-discrimination law as applied to insurers' AI use cases — underwriting, pricing, claims, fraud detection, and marketing.
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In effect Strength: limited
Executive Order 24-06: Artificial Intelligence and Data Cent
Rhode Island · Effective February 29, 2024 · Executive Order 24-06: Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers of Excellence
Governor Dan McKee's executive order establishes an AI Task Force, an AI Center of Excellence and a Data Center of Excellence, and directs the Department of Administration to develop a state code of ethics for AI and secure AI adoption across state agencies.
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In effect Strength: moderate
Rhode Island ALPR installation pause and 60-day review (2026)
Rhode Island · Effective August 18, 2026 · Rhode Island — Governor's order pausing new ALPR installation and commissioning a 60-day statewide review (issued August 18, 2026)
Governor Dan McKee ordered a statewide pause on installing or activating any new automated license plate reader cameras on August 18, 2026, together with a sixty-day review to establish uniform standards governing the technology and the data it collects. The order binds the Rhode Island State Police directly: they may keep using the cameras they already have, but they may not install or activate any new ones. For cities and towns the order is a request rather than a command — McKee urged them to follow suit, which is the limit of what a governor can do to independent municipal police departments. He directed State Police Colonel Darnel Weaver to run the review in consultation with the Rhode Island Police Chiefs' Association, the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns and other stakeholders. The stated endpoint is legislation: McKee said that when the review is done he will work with lawmakers on a bill codifying the protections and establishing clear, consistent statewide standards for ALPR use. The order came as municipalities across Rhode Island were already resisting Flock cameras on their own, and it is one of four state-level actions in August 2026 — with Florida, Texas and Connecticut — that marked a national turn against license plate surveillance.
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In effect Strength: limited
RI Synthetic Intimate Imagery Law
Rhode Island · Effective July 2, 2025 · 2025 RI H5046 / S0136
Rhode Island updated its unauthorized-image ("revenge porn") statute to explicitly criminalize sexually explicit images that were created by a digital device or AI — i.e., synthetic nudes and explicit deepfakes of real people — making nonconsensual creation and distribution a crime. Signed into law July 2, 2025.
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In effect Strength: limited
Rhode Island 17-30 (ban on undisclosed election deepfakes near an election)
Rhode Island · Effective July 2, 2025 · R.I. Gen. Laws 17-30-1 to 17-30-4; P.L. 2025, ch. 409 & 410, eff. July 2, 2025
Rhode Island bars distributing synthetic media that the distributor knows is a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake of a candidate within 90 days of an election. The ban does not apply if the image, audio, or video carries a clear disclosure that it was manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence. A candidate depicted in violating media can sue to block its distribution and may also recover damages.
Federal AI rules that apply in Cumberland, Rhode Island
These federal rules apply everywhere in the United States, including Cumberland, Rhode Island. Showing the 10 strongest and most recent.
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In effect Strength: stronger
TVA data center capacity commitment charge (2026)
Tennessee Valley Authority · Effective October 1, 2026 · Tenn. Valley Auth. Bd. of Dirs. — Data Center Capacity Commitment Charge (approved Aug. 20, 2026; eff. Oct. 1, 2026)
The Tennessee Valley Authority's Board of Directors approved a separate, higher wholesale rate for data centers on August 20, 2026, effective October 1. New or expanding data center loads above 5 megawatts now fall under a Capacity Commitment Charge attached to TVA's data center rate schedules, designed to recover the incremental capacity costs those customers impose on the system. The headline figures are substantial: upfront capacity commitment charges of roughly $1.5 million per megawatt, payable over three to five years, and an all-in average billing increase for data center customers of about 10%, phased in across three consecutive fiscal years. The stated purpose is to keep residential rates low while still serving growing data center demand. TVA matters here out of proportion to a single utility. It is a federal corporate agency supplying power across seven states, so this is not a state rate case but a regional cost-allocation decision reaching a large share of the Southeast — and TVA is among the first large US utilities to adopt a tariff aimed specifically at AI-driven load. Where most 2026 measures in this dataset restrict where data centers may be built, this one changes what they pay to run.
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In effect Strength: stronger
Bartz v. Anthropic
N.D. Cal. · Effective September 5, 2025 · Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, No. 3:24-cv-05417 (N.D. Cal.)
Authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued Anthropic over its use of pirated-book datasets to train Claude. In June 2025 Judge William Alsup ruled that training on lawfully purchased books was fair use. The piracy claims (LibGen ingestion) proceeded toward settlement; in September 2025 Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion class settlement covering ~500,000 works. Judge Alsup granted preliminary approval September 25, 2025 and final approval July 20, 2026. The appeal period runs through August 19, 2026; class members will not receive payments until at least end of 2026.
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In effect Strength: stronger
COPPA + 2025 Rule (childrens data)
United States · Effective June 23, 2025 · 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506; 16 C.F.R. Part 312
COPPA requires online services aimed at children under 13 to get verifiable parental consent before collecting kids' personal data. The 2025 rule update — fully in effect since April 22, 2026 — adds biometric identifiers (like face templates and voiceprints, which matter for AI tools), requires separate parental consent before sharing children's data for targeted advertising, and tightens data retention limits.
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In effect Strength: stronger
TAKE IT DOWN Act
United States · Effective May 19, 2025 · Pub. L. No. 119-12 (S. 146)
Makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish intimate images of someone without consent, including AI-generated deepfakes. Social media and similar platforms must give victims a way to request removal and must take the content (and known copies) down within 48 hours. The platform removal requirement became enforceable May 19, 2026, and the FTC has already begun enforcement.
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Blocked / in litigation
NetChoice v. Yost (Ohio)
S.D. Ohio · Effective April 16, 2025 · NetChoice, LLC v. Yost, No. 2:24-cv-00047 (S.D. Ohio Apr. 16, 2025)
Ohio's Social Media Parental Notification Act — requiring parental consent for minors' social-media use, including algorithmic feeds — was preliminarily enjoined on February 12, 2024, then permanently enjoined on April 16, 2025 when the district court granted summary judgment for NetChoice. The state appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which vacated the district court's injunction in 2026.
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In effect Strength: stronger
Thaler v. Perlmutter (Copyright)
D.C. Cir. · Effective March 18, 2025 · Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025)
The companion copyright case: Stephen Thaler sought to register a copyright with 'Creativity Machine' (his AI) as the author. The D.C. Circuit affirmed in March 2025 that the Copyright Act's human-authorship requirement is dispositive as a matter of statutory law. AI cannot be a copyright author under U.S. law.
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In effect Strength: stronger
Louis v. SafeRent
D. Mass. · Effective November 20, 2024 · Louis v. SafeRent Solutions, LLC, No. 1:22-cv-10800 (D. Mass.)
SafeRent agreed in November 2024 to a $2.275M settlement and a five-year ban on using its 'SafeRent Score' for housing-voucher applicants, after a class action alleged its AI tenant-screening tool systematically denied housing to Black and Hispanic Section 8 voucher holders. The first major AI tenant-screening Fair Housing Act settlement.
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In effect Strength: stronger
FTC Impersonation Rule (AI)
United States · Effective April 1, 2024 · 16 C.F.R. Part 461; 89 Fed. Reg. 15017
The FTC's Impersonation Rule lets the agency directly sue scammers who pretend to be a government agency or a real business — including those who use AI-cloned voices or generated images to do so. Civil penalties can reach $53,088 per violation. The FTC also issued a supplemental notice in February 2024 proposing to extend the rule to all individual impersonation.
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In effect Strength: stronger
FTC v. Rite Aid
FTC · Effective February 26, 2024 · FTC v. Rite Aid Corp., No. 2:23-cv-05023 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 19, 2023)
The FTC banned Rite Aid from using facial-recognition technology in its stores for five years after finding the pharmacy chain's FRT system falsely tagged customers — disproportionately women and people of color — as shoplifters, leading to wrongful detentions and humiliations.
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In effect Strength: stronger
TCPA (AI voice calls)
United States · Effective February 8, 2024 · 47 U.S.C. § 227; FCC 24-17
Robocalls using AI-cloned or AI-generated voices are treated like other 'artificial voice' calls: callers need your prior express consent, must identify themselves, and must offer opt-outs for telemarketing. You can personally sue violators for $500 to $1,500 per illegal call.
Frequently asked questions about AI laws in Cumberland, Rhode Island
Are there AI laws in Cumberland, Rhode Island?
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Does Rhode Island have an AI privacy law?
Are deepfakes illegal in Rhode Island?
Can my employer use AI to screen me for jobs in Cumberland?
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Are facial recognition cameras allowed in Cumberland?
Is Cumberland regulated by Rhode Island's consumer privacy act?
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This page is generated from our open civic dataset. If you know of a Cumberland ordinance, county rule, or local enforcement action we should add, email feedback@ailawsusa.com or submit a correction. Every entry must include a verifiable source.