Florida is moving to regulate how artificial intelligence is used across its public education system, putting the state on track to establish AI policies spanning classrooms from prekindergarten through the university level.
The effort took a significant step this week when the Florida Department of Education proposed a rule requiring all 28 institutions in the Florida College System to adopt policies governing the use and limits of artificial intelligence by students, faculty, staff and campus guests. The State Board of Education is scheduled to consider the proposal Sept. 16 at Polk State College in Winter Haven.
At the same time, Florida's State University System is developing its own AI requirements for the state's 12 public universities. The Florida Board of Governors is expected to consider language next week directing universities to require course syllabi to disclose faculty use of AI and permitted student use. The Board of Governors created a Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity earlier this year to address the technology's growing role across higher education.
Taken together, the proposals would make Florida one of the most aggressive states in the country in moving AI governance from individual campus policies into statewide higher education policy.
The college-system rule would require each institution's governing board to establish policies addressing when AI may be used and when its use is prohibited, with specific attention to academic integrity and dishonesty, course assignments and grading. The proposed framework also calls for institutions to protect student privacy and information and to help students understand how AI is incorporated into their education.
For graded assignments and assessments, Florida's higher education system has already told the U.S. Department of Education that its policies must prohibit students from using AI unless an instructor explicitly permits it. That position was included in an Aug. 18 joint response from the state's higher education governing bodies to a federal “Call to Action” on artificial intelligence.
The state is also drawing a line between AI used as an instructional technology and systems designed to simulate human relationships. Under the proposed college rule, instructional AI would not include tools designed to meet a student's social needs, simulate friendship or an emotional relationship, or use human-like features intended to encourage continued interaction.
That provision reflects a broader concern emerging around AI's role in education: not simply whether students are using generative AI to write papers, but whether institutions should permit AI systems to take on functions traditionally performed by teachers, advisers and other human members of the campus community.
Florida is pursuing similar guardrails in K-12 education. The Department of Education is directing school districts to incorporate AI provisions into their internet-safety policies. Districts would have to notify parents when an AI instructional tool is approved for use and provide an opportunity to opt students out. AI tools used in prekindergarten through fifth grade would receive additional review, and schools would be prohibited from using instructional AI to meet students' social or emotional needs or simulate an emotional relationship.
The effort comes as higher education systems nationwide are still largely developing AI policies at the institutional level. Florida's approach instead places the state directly in the policy-making process, establishing minimum expectations that individual colleges and universities would have to translate into campus rules.
That distinction could make Florida a useful test case for a question increasingly facing higher education leaders: how much discretion should individual institutions and faculty retain over AI use when the technology touches academic integrity, grading, student privacy and instruction?
Florida's approach also illustrates how quickly AI governance is moving from broad statements about responsible use into the mechanics of college administration. Universities and colleges may have to define permitted and prohibited uses, revise academic-integrity policies, address AI in course syllabi and assignments, establish privacy safeguards and determine how much authority individual instructors retain.
For institutions, the issue is no longer whether AI belongs in higher education. The question is increasingly who gets to decide how it belongs there.
Florida's proposed college rule now heads toward the Sept. 16 State Board of Education meeting, while the state's university system is preparing to take up its own AI-related requirements. If both tracks advance, Florida will have established a statewide framework governing artificial intelligence across virtually every level of public education — giving other states another model to watch as they grapple with the same technology on their own campuses.
