AI Laws in Providence, Rhode Island
AI Laws USA tracks 21 AI rules that apply to people and businesses in Providence, Rhode Island: 10+ federal rules, 8 Rhode Island state-level rules, and 3 local Providence ordinances. Coverage is strongest on automated decision-making, government use of AI, consumer protection, and consumer data privacy. 9 of these rules are already in effect. Each entry below links to its official source.
Providence local AI rules (and Providence County)
3 local AI rules specific to Providence, Rhode Island or Providence County.
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Proposed / pending
Providence CPRA Amendments
Providence, RI · Providence CPRA amendments (introduced Oct. 6, 2025)
Providence Council Committee advanced amendments to the Community-Police Relations Act that would bar RTCC/ALPR use to assist federal immigration enforcement absent a judicial warrant, prohibit demographic data collection via city surveillance, and require written agreements with data-accessing partner agencies.
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In effect Strength: limited
Ordinance prohibiting price-fixing rental algorithms
Providence, RI · Effective May 15, 2025 · Ordinance prohibiting price-fixing rental algorithms (Providence Code ch. 13 Art. X §§ 13-69–13-73)
Providence (ordinance by Council President Rachel Miller, final passage May 15, 2025) bans landlords from using price-fixing rental algorithms like RealPage, with civil penalties up to $500 per day per instance of violation.
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In effect Strength: limited
Providence Police Department General Order 460.01 - Unmanned
Providence, RI · Effective March 1, 2024 · Providence Police Department General Order 460.01 - Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Operations
The Providence Police Department issued General Order 460.01 governing its UAS operations, a formal written policy setting the rules for drone deployment by the department.
Rhode Island-level AI rules
8 Rhode Island state rules apply to residents and businesses in Providence. Sorted strongest first.
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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 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
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 Providence, Rhode Island
These federal rules apply everywhere in the United States, including Providence, 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 Providence, Rhode Island
Are there AI laws in Providence, Rhode Island?
What federal AI rules apply in Providence?
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 Providence?
How do I report an AI law violation in Providence?
Are facial recognition cameras allowed in Providence?
Is Providence regulated by Rhode Island's consumer privacy act?
Have we missed an AI rule in Providence?
This page is generated from our open civic dataset. If you know of a Providence 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.