AI Laws in Lowell, Massachusetts
AI Laws USA tracks 20 AI rules that apply to people and businesses in Lowell, Massachusetts: 10+ federal rules, 8 Massachusetts state-level rules, and 2 local Lowell ordinances. Coverage is strongest on consumer protection, government use of AI, data-center siting and energy, and automated decision-making. 7 of these rules are already in effect. Each entry below links to its official source.
Lowell local AI rules (and Middlesex County County)
2 local AI rules specific to Lowell, Massachusetts or Middlesex County County.
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Blocked / in litigation
Lowell MA Markley data center diesel generator injunction (2026)
Lowell, MA · Middlesex Superior Court (Mass.) — order pausing installation of four diesel generators at the Markley Group Lowell data center pending challenge to the MassDEP air permit (August 10, 2026)
A group of Lowell residents went to Middlesex Superior Court on July 29, 2026 to stop the expansion of a 352,000 square-foot data center operated by the Markley Group, a Boston-based data and telecommunications company. Some of them live in the shadow of the building and regularly smell the exhaust from the facility's diesel generators. Their argument is about process: they say the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection violated their rights when it approved the air quality permit needed for the expansion the previous year without considering the community's objections. Their attorney put it simply — 'The problem here is that our clients never got the hearing that the law entitles them to.' On Monday, August 10, 2026, Superior Court Judge C. William Barrett granted their request and PAUSED the installation of four new diesel generators that had not yet been installed, while the broader legal challenge proceeds. The rest of the expansion is not covered by that order. There is a prior chapter worth knowing. In March 2026 the Lowell City Council adopted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction and expansion while it studies the industry. Markley sued over it and reached an agreement allowing the company to proceed with expansion plans that predated the moratorium — the same pre-existing-rights limit that defeated Rockford's moratorium against the project that prompted it. The court order is what the moratorium could not deliver.
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In effect Strength: moderate
Lowell MA 360-day data center moratorium (2026)
Lowell, MA · Effective March 10, 2026 · Lowell, Mass. City Council — 360-day data center moratorium adopted March 10, 2026
On March 10, 2026, Lowell's City Council voted to pause permits and approvals for new or expanded data centers for 360 days, with the option of a 180-day extension, while the city rewrites its zoning. It was described as the first such moratorium fully in place in Massachusetts. The fight is over the Markley Group's large data center in the Sacred Heart neighborhood, whose diesel backup generators have grown from 7 to 23. Markley sued, arguing the pause did not apply to it, but later agreed to drop the case. In October 2026 city planners are taking two options to the council: limit future data centers to 15 megawatts, or ban them in every zoning district. Markley's existing campus and recent property purchases would be grandfathered either way.
Massachusetts-level AI rules
8 Massachusetts state rules apply to residents and businesses in Lowell. Sorted strongest first.
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In effect Strength: stronger
Massachusetts EO 658 responsible data center development (2026)
Massachusetts · Effective September 8, 2026 · Mass. Exec. Order No. 658 (Sept. 8, 2026)
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed Executive Order No. 658 on September 8, 2026, titled Establishing Requirements for Responsible Data Center Development and Operations in Massachusetts to Protect and Support Ratepayers, Communities, and the Environment. It is the most comprehensive single data center instrument in this dataset, because it combines four mechanisms that other states adopted separately. First, any data center with peak demand above 25 megawatts must meet 100% of its electricity demand with clean energy. Second, developers must obtain local approval before they can seek state construction permits — the same inversion Pennsylvania adopted three weeks earlier, and for the same reason: it stops a developer arriving at a town already holding state authorisations. Third, applicants must demonstrate conformance with state standards on air quality and public health, water use and community engagement, and must submit a community benefits agreement with key stakeholders. Fourth, and the part that gives the clean energy requirement teeth, a developer who does not procure enough incremental clean electricity to cover annual consumption must make an alternative compliance payment, and those funds are credited to a Ratepayer Protection Fund that offsets electricity supply costs for all ratepayers. Compliance with the clean energy requirement can be met by generating onsite, funding construction of nearby new generation, or paying into that fund. The Department of Environmental Protection must stand up the payment mechanism by the end of 2026.
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In effect Strength: limited
MA AG Campbell
MA · Effective April 16, 2024 · MA AG Campbell — Advisory on Consumer Protection, Anti-Discrimination, Data Security and AI (2024-04-16)
Clarifies that Chapter 93A, the Anti-Discrimination Law, and MA Data Security Regs apply fully to AI developers, suppliers, and users; identifies algorithmic discrimination and misrepresenting AI capabilities as unfair/deceptive.
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In effect Strength: limited
MA AG
MA · Effective July 10, 2025 · MA AG — $2.5M Earnest Operations Settlement (AI Underwriting Discrimination) (2025-07-10)
Settlement with student-loan lender Earnest over allegations its AI underwriting model and 'Knockout Rule' produced disparate impacts on Black, Hispanic, and non-citizen applicants. Mandates AI governance, annual fair-lending testing, AG reporting.
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In effect Strength: limited
MA EO 629
MA · Effective February 14, 2024 · Mass. Exec. Order No. 629 (Feb. 14, 2024)
Governor Healey's EO 629 creates a 26-member AI Strategic Task Force spanning government, labor, healthcare, finance, education, and life sciences to recommend AI policy for Massachusetts.
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In effect Strength: limited
MA DOI AI Bulletin
MA · Effective December 9, 2024 · Massachusetts Division of Insurance Bulletin 2024-10 (2024-12-09)
The MA Department of Insurance adopted the NAIC Model Bulletin on Use of Artificial Intelligence Systems by Insurers. Insurers licensed in MA 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
MA Digitized Intimate-Images Law (deepfake NCII)
Massachusetts · Effective September 18, 2024 · Acts of 2024, ch. 118 (H.4744), amending G.L. c. 265, Sec. 43A
Massachusetts's 'An Act to Prevent Abuse and Exploitation' created a criminal offense for distributing nonconsensual intimate images and expressly extended it to 'visual material produced by digitization.' Digitization is defined to include creating or altering visual material — such as through computer-generated images — in a way that would falsely appear to a reasonable person to be an authentic depiction of the person shown. This brings AI-generated and digitally fabricated intimate images within the same prohibition that applies to real photos and videos.
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Proposed / pending
Massachusetts AI-CSAM Criminalization Act (Senate)
Massachusetts · S 1174, 194th General Court of Massachusetts (2025-2026)
Would close a gap in Massachusetts law by criminalizing the creation and distribution of sexually explicit images of children that are technologically edited, collaged, morphed, or AI-generated. Massachusetts is one of only five states that has not updated its child pornography statutes to cover AI-generated content. The bill aligns state law with statutes already enacted in 45 other states.
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Proposed / pending
Massachusetts AI-CSAM Criminalization Act (House)
Massachusetts · H 1593, 194th General Court of Massachusetts (2025-2026)
House companion to S 1174. Would update Massachusetts child pornography statutes to criminalize the creation, distribution, or possession of sexually explicit images of children that are AI-generated, morphed, or digitally edited. Would bring Massachusetts into alignment with 45 other states that already criminalize AI-generated CSAM under state law.
Federal AI rules that apply in Lowell, Massachusetts
These federal rules apply everywhere in the United States, including Lowell, Massachusetts. 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 Lowell, Massachusetts
Are there AI laws in Lowell, Massachusetts?
What federal AI rules apply in Lowell?
Does Massachusetts have an AI privacy law?
Are deepfakes illegal in Massachusetts?
Can my employer use AI to screen me for jobs in Lowell?
How do I report an AI law violation in Lowell?
Are facial recognition cameras allowed in Lowell?
Is Lowell regulated by Massachusetts's consumer privacy act?
Have we missed an AI rule in Lowell?
This page is generated from our open civic dataset. If you know of a Lowell 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.