AI Laws in Little Rock, Arkansas
AI Laws USA tracks 19 AI rules that apply to people and businesses in Little Rock, Arkansas: 10+ federal rules, 8 Arkansas state-level rules, and 1 local Little Rock ordinance. Coverage is strongest on consumer protection, government use of AI, automated decision-making, and deepfakes. 9 of these rules are already in effect. Each entry below links to its official source.
Little Rock local AI rules
1 local AI rule specific to Little Rock, Arkansas.
-
In effect Strength: limited
Industrial Zoning Ordinance Regulating Data Centers
Little Rock, AR · Effective June 3, 2026 · Industrial Zoning Ordinance Regulating Data Centers
Little Rock's Board of Directors unanimously amended industrial zoning ordinances to regulate data centers, requiring water-use reports and setting noise limits, after declining to enact a moratorium.
Arkansas-level AI rules
8 Arkansas state rules apply to residents and businesses in Little Rock. Sorted strongest first.
-
In effect Strength: limited
AR Act 1096 (2019 AV)
Arkansas · Effective July 24, 2019 · Act 1096 of 2019; Ark. Code Ann. §§ 27-51-1801 et seq.
Arkansas authorized commercial driver-assistive truck platooning and limited driverless AV pilots, established a Pilot Program for Driverless-Capable Vehicles administered by the Arkansas State Highway Commission, and required pilots to file insurance and incident-reporting plans.
-
In effect Strength: limited
AR DOI AI Bulletin
AR · Effective July 31, 2024 · Arkansas Insurance Department Bulletin 13-2024 (2024-07-31)
The AR Department of Insurance adopted the NAIC Model Bulletin on Use of Artificial Intelligence Systems by Insurers. Insurers licensed in AR 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.
-
In effect Strength: limited
Arkansas Deepfake Sexual Content Act
Arkansas · Effective April 17, 2025 · 2025 Ark. Acts 827 (HB 1529)
Arkansas criminalizes creating or distributing deepfake sexual imagery — AI-generated or digitally manipulated images that appear authentic and depict an identifiable person in nudity or sexual conduct without consent. First offense is a Class A misdemeanor, repeats are felonies; victims can sue for punitive damages, and the Attorney General can sue platforms that lack reasonable safeguards against generating this content.
-
In effect Strength: moderate
Arkansas public entity AI/ADS policy mandate (Act 848, 2025)
Arkansas · Effective August 5, 2025 · Ark. Act 848 of 2025 (HB 1958), amending Ark. Code Ann. § 25-1-128; eff. August 5, 2025
Arkansas Act 848 (HB 1958), approved April 17, 2025 and in effect since August 5, 2025, requires every public entity in Arkansas, including state agencies, school districts, colleges, and cities and counties, to adopt a written policy on the use of artificial intelligence and automated decision tools. Each policy must spell out how AI may be used and must require a human employee to make any final decision, whatever the AI tool recommends. Employees must be trained on the policy, state entities must make their policy available to the public on request, and each entity must set up a disciplinary procedure for violations. The policies must also bar using public technology and AI to lobby or push personal political opinions to elected officials, to break the law, or to get around security controls. The bill passed 93-0 in the House and 35-0 in the Senate.
-
In effect Strength: limited
Arkansas Frank Broyles Act AI amendment — voice and likeness protection (2025)
Arkansas · Effective August 5, 2025 · Ark. Act 159 / HB 1071 (2025 Regular Session), amending Ark. Code Ann. §§ 4-75-1103, 4-75-1110 and 4-75-1112 (Frank Broyles Publicity Rights Protection Act, § 4-75-1101 et seq.)
Arkansas Act 159 (HB 1071), signed February 25, 2025 and in force since August 5, 2025, updates the Frank Broyles Publicity Rights Protection Act of 2016 to cover artificial intelligence. It adds 'voice' — including an AI-generated simulation of a real person's voice — to the protected attributes, and makes clear that a 'photograph' or 'likeness' includes images, video or 3-D reproductions generated by AI. A person whose photograph, voice or likeness is reproduced by AI and used commercially without authorization can sue for damages and recover lost profits. The Act is named for the late University of Arkansas Razorbacks coach Frank Broyles.
-
In effect Strength: limited
AR Generative AI Ownership Act (Act 927)
Arkansas · Effective August 5, 2025 · Ark. Act 927 (2025) (HB1876), codified at Ark. Code Ann. tit. 18, ch. 4 (Sec. 18-4-101 et seq.)
Arkansas set default ownership rules for the inputs and outputs of generative AI tools. A person who supplies the input or direction to a generative AI tool owns the content it produces, as long as that content does not infringe existing intellectual property rights. A person who lawfully supplies the data used to train a model owns the resulting trained model. When an employee is directed to use a generative AI tool within the scope of their job, the employer owns the resulting output and model. The law sets property rights rather than prohibitions, so it does not impose penalties.
-
In effect Strength: limited
Initial Report - Arkansas Artificial Intelligence and Analyt
Arkansas · Effective February 7, 2025 · Initial Report - Arkansas Artificial Intelligence and Analytics Center of Excellence
The Arkansas AI and Analytics Center of Excellence (Department of Shared Administrative Services) delivered the governor an initial report recommending statewide AI governance, a Chief AI Officer, NIST-based evaluation of AI systems, updated procurement policies to safeguard citizen data, and AI-literacy training for state employees.
-
In effect Strength: limited
Arkansas AI CSAM Law
Arkansas · Effective April 22, 2025 · 2025 Ark. Acts 977 (HB 1877), amending Ark. Code Ann. § 5-27-603
Arkansas expressly criminalizes AI-generated CSAM that is indistinguishable from real child imagery — defining 'computer generated' as AI-produced and 'indistinguishable' as imagery a reasonable person would believe depicts an actual child. Limited exemptions for law enforcement and good-faith AI safety testing.
Federal AI rules that apply in Little Rock, Arkansas
These federal rules apply everywhere in the United States, including Little Rock, Arkansas. Showing the 10 strongest and most recent.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 Little Rock, Arkansas
Are there AI laws in Little Rock, Arkansas?
What federal AI rules apply in Little Rock?
Does Arkansas have an AI privacy law?
Are deepfakes illegal in Arkansas?
Can my employer use AI to screen me for jobs in Little Rock?
How do I report an AI law violation in Little Rock?
Are facial recognition cameras allowed in Little Rock?
Is Little Rock regulated by Arkansas's consumer privacy act?
Have we missed an AI rule in Little Rock?
This page is generated from our open civic dataset. If you know of a Little Rock 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.