Protecting Marylanders in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

AI is already reshaping how Marylanders work, learn, shop, and receive care. Used well with strong guardrails in place, it can expand opportunity and strengthen public services, but those gains are not automatic. The same technology can covertly surveil workers, deny people care, discriminate behind a veneer of neutrality, deskill and undermine jobs, threaten safety, and strip Marylanders of control over their own data and likeness. How AI is developed, deployed, and regulated will shape both its benefits and its risks. 

Maryland's goal is to make sure AI serves the people of this state: that Marylanders help shape the tools that affect them, are equipped for what comes next, and share in the gains — with human judgment at the center of consequential decisions and the civil and worker rights, privacy, and dignity of every Marylander preserved. We will be guided by the following three principles: 

1. Marylanders deserve protection from new and emerging threats — to their rights and safety, and to our infrastructure, our democracy, our public services and our economy.
2. Workers and the unions that represent them deserve a voice in how AI affects them — along with high-quality, worker-centered training and real transition support.
3. Our children must be protected from exploitation and harm.

Principle 1: Marylanders Deserve Protection from New and Emerging Threats to Their Rights and Safety, Our Infrastructure, Our Democracy, Our Public Services and Our Economy 

AI is advancing faster than the safeguards around it. The features that make these systems powerful also make them dangerous in the wrong hands: AI-enabled cyberattacks, fraud, and impersonation are already common, and the most capable models raise harder questions about what they could enable as they improve. Marylanders should not have to wait for a disaster, or for Congress, to be protected.

Where Maryland leads today

Defending state systems and critical infrastructure

• Accounting for the State's own AI: Maryland government holds its own use of AI to public, accountable standards. Executive Order 01.01.2024.02 - PDF - 195.52 KB and the Artificial Intelligence Governance Act of 2024 (SB 818) requires agencies to inventory and assess their AI systems. Maryland's public AI use-case inventory offers a public accounting of where and how the State uses AI, one of only a handful of states to do so.
• Detecting novel threats in real time: Maryland's Office of Security Management (OSM) already leverages advanced tools, including AI, to detect and deter novel cybersecurity threats in computer systems throughout Maryland State Government, protecting Marylanders' data, privacy, and the integrity of public services.
• Sharing those defenses statewide: Maryland law requires OSM to partner with local governments, school systems, and critical infrastructure operators, so counties, schools, and utilities inherit the same defenses the State builds for itself.
• Bringing in dedicated AI-threat resources: The Governor's Office of Homeland Security has brought on a fellow focused for the coming year on cybersecurity and emerging AI-driven threats.
• Drawing on Maryland's unique federal cyber footprint: Drawing on its unique cyber footprint, the Maryland National Guard stands ready to support civilian authorities in protecting critical infrastructure. Its close integration with the nation’s cyber enterprise and depth of cyber expertise provide specialized capabilities and capacity not resident in most other state National Guards.

Guarding against deepfakes

• Ensuring Maryland is prosecuting deepfake crimes: Maryland is one of the only, if not the only, State to have a task force that focuses on crimes committed by using AI and identifying deepfakes — the Maryland Artificial Intelligence & Synthetic Media Threats Task Force (MASTTF) within the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC). 
• Protecting elections: Maryland enacted an election deepfake statute, drafted with an eye toward the First Amendment challenges that comparable laws in other states have encountered. It prohibits disseminating materially false information about a candidate or election with intent to mislead voters, with carve-outs for news reporting, satire, and parody (SB 141).
• Fighting deepfake intimate images: The State expanded its revenge-porn law so victims of AI-generated deepfake intimate images can pursue both criminal charges and civil lawsuits against those who create or share them (SB 360).
• Criminalizing AI impersonation: A new law extends Maryland's identity-fraud statute to cover using AI or deepfakes to impersonate someone for fraudulent or harmful purposes, with criminal penalties and a civil remedy for victims (SB 8).

Protecting civil rights

• Creating a binding fairness-and-equity standard for State AI: Executive Order 01.01.2024.02 - PDF - 195.52 KB requires that State government's use of AI account for the risk that these systems can perpetuate bias, and take steps to avoid discrimination or disparate impact based on protected characteristics — including race, color, ethnicity, sex, religion, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and genetic information. 
• Deploying bias testing and impact assessments for high-risk systems: Under the Responsible AI Policy, AI used for high risk decisions made by state agencies — such as benefits eligibility, lending and underwriting, and law enforcement — must undergo an Algorithmic Impact Assessment, bias testing, and human oversight, with periodic auditing to catch emergent or unintended discrimination.
• Banning rights-violating uses: The Responsible AI Policy also provides that systems that threaten fundamental rights, such as social scoring and unlawful surveillance, are prohibited from State government use entirely, regardless of what safeguards are proposed.

Protecting consumers

• Giving consumers real control over their personal data: Maryland's data-privacy law limits how much personal information companies can collect and sell in the first place and lets residents opt out of being profiled (Maryland Online Data Privacy Act).
• Banning "surveillance pricing" at the grocery store: Maryland became the first state in the nation to stop food stores and delivery apps from using Marylanders' personal data or AI to quietly charge them a higher price than the next shopper for the same item. Other merchants that price this way must post a plain warning that the price was set by an algorithm or personal data (Protection From Predatory Pricing Act).
• Keeping AI accountable in insurance and health care: Health insurers and their review firms can no longer let an algorithm deny, delay, or water down care — coverage decisions must be based on the patient's own medical history, and a qualified human doctor, not software, makes the final call (HB 820). More broadly, in Bulletin 24-11 - PDF, the Maryland Insurance Administration put all insurers and health plans on notice that AI-driven decisions — across underwriting, pricing, claims handling, and fraud detection — must comply with the State's existing unfair trade practices and unfair discrimination laws, and directed carriers to maintain a written AI governance program with bias testing, risk controls, and human oversight, enforceable through examination and market conduct action. 

Moving forward

Regulating frontier AI companies

• Protecting Maryland: The AI Subcabinet, in consultation with key stakeholders,, will develop legislative recommendations for regulating frontier AI model companies — including safety frameworks and testing, worker protections, independent third-party audits and evaluations, whistleblower protections, public reporting, and 72-hour incident reporting.
• Informing a national effort: These recommendations will be shared with the National Governors Association (NGA) new Council on AI and support exploration of inter-state cooperation as we wait for federal action on AI regulation.
• Sharing best practice: Leveraging the Governor's Chairmanship of the National Governor’s Association, the Administration will coordinate efforts so that when States act to prevent AI threats, they share resources, policies, and expertise to present a unified front.
• Learning from our allies and informing international efforts: The MASTFF has travelled to allied nations to share best practices and will continue to do so given the threats of AI know no borders. Maryland experts continually educate federal, state and local law enforcement about crimes involving AI.

Creating a statutory Right of Publicity

• Recognizing your likeness as a property right: The Administration will work with the legislature and key stakeholders to establish a statutory Right of Publicity that recognizes a Marylander's likeness as a property right, with First Amendment carve-outs and post-mortem protection, and with no requirement to demonstrate commercial value. Under current law, an individual whose likeness is cloned must prove harm; the Right of Publicity would establish ownership from the outset. 

Protecting against algorithmic bias

• Providing guidance across housing, lending, and employment: The Administration will direct the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights (MCCR) and the relevant financial, housing, and labor regulators to ensure that affected Marylanders know that existing civil rights, consumer protection, housing, and lending laws already reach AI-driven decisions, and will issue domain-specific guidance in employment, housing, and lending. The Department of Housing and Community Development will prohibit algorithmic tenant-screening tools that result in the discrimination of protected characteristics in properties that receive rental housing financing from the Department. Maryland’s Office of Financial Regulation has been a national leader among state banking regulators in developing guidelines to supervise financial institutions’ use of AI; Maryland’s lending laws prohibit unfair, deceptive or discriminatory practices, including when AI is used.
• Filling the federal gap on workplace AI: MCCR and the Department of Labor, with Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and Department of Information Technology (DoIT) for State workers, will issue coordinated guidance explaining how existing discrimination laws already apply when AI is the mechanism, stepping into the gap left when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) withdrew its AI guidance.
• Stopping algorithmic rent collusion: The Administration will work with the legislature to prohibit landlords from colluding on rents through non-public competitor data on shared pricing platforms, which can raise housing costs across the market.
• Protecting at-risk gamblers: The Administration will work with the legislature to prohibit gambling operators from using algorithmic and non-algorithmic means to identify and target users showing problem-gambling patterns, and to restrict late-night and post-loss wager solicitations.

Principle 2: Workers and the Unions that Represent Them Deserve a Voice in How AI Impacts Workers and High-Quality Worker-Centered Training and Real Transition Support 

People need to be at the center of AI adoption. AI is already changing how we work, and the pace will only accelerate. That makes close collaboration between workers, their representatives, and employers essential, so that adoption augments the work of Marylanders, improves job quality and services, and does not undermine workers' dignity, safety, or the right to organize.

Preparing Marylanders for an AI economy requires engaging workers in the process of technology transformation. And it means providing high-quality, worker-centered training and real transition support, built through joint labor-management partnerships and proven models. Maryland state government’s generative-AI deployments are designed to augment the work of employees rather than replace it — taking routine, time-consuming tasks off people's plates so they can focus on the parts of the job that call for human judgment.   

Where Maryland leads today

• Preserving human accountability and judgement while limiting invasive monitoring: The State's Responsible AI Policy requires that any deployment of AI by the State of Maryland incorporates human review of new AI systems, ensures bias in AI systems is proactively identified and mitigated, and bars the most invasive monitoring, including emotion recognition, covert or real-time biometric identification, and social scoring.
• Designing tools with the people who use them: Maryland government builds technology with State workers, not around them. It created the Maryland Digital Service in 2024 — its first in-house team of user researchers and service designers, staffed by full-time State employees rather than contractors — to make worker input the foundation of any deployment.  Maryland also requires any technology project above $5 million or supporting a critical public function to have dedicated product-management and user-experience staff, including a User Experience Lead, and has a Discovery Team that identifies users before anything is built. The Department of Information Technology's AI Innovation Lab also gives agencies a secure environment to pilot and test AI tools side by side with the people who will use them.
• Creating channels for questions and concerns: The Department of Information Technology hosts a monthly AI Community of Practice, open to all State workers, to answer questions, gather comments, and demonstrate new technology, alongside open office hours where staff can raise inquiries or concerns directly.
• Providing training for State employees: Maryland provides AI and digital-skills training at no cost through a partnership with the nonprofit Innovate US, delivered through Workday, making the State among the first to offer such training broadly to its workforce, and a new Maryland Data Academy is building data and AI literacy across the workforce. State employees across dozens of agencies already use AI for everyday tasks such as drafting, summarizing, and note-taking.
• Expanding training and transition support for  Maryland workers: The Maryland Department of Labor committed $4 million in 2026 in AI-resilient workforce approaches.  Roughly $2.5 million supports hands-on training  in the state’s lighthouse industries  — life sciences, IT, aerospace and defense, and manufacturing — to help workers build in-demand technical and transferable skills as industries are reshaped by AI. These investments reached nearly 600 Marylanders. Another $1.5 million supports community-based Cyber and AI Clinics under the Cyber Maryland program.   Maryland is also a founding partner in RAISE US, a national initiative launched in 2026 to help workers navigate the AI economy — expanding Service Year Option pathways, funding career-transition models, and supporting displaced workers in starting businesses, with more efforts under development.

Moving forward

• Creating a standing Labor-Management Committee: The Department of Budget and Management, working with the AI Subcabinet and relevant State agencies, will reach out to unions representing State workers to engage them in convening a standing Statewide Labor-Management Committee on the impact of AI on workers. The state is committed to partnering with our employees and their unions to ensure we uphold the highest labor standards and protect the rights of workers who deliver our public services. 
• Ensuring workers across Maryland have similar protections: The Administration will work with the legislature and key stakeholders, including the Workgroup on Artificial Intelligence Implementation and those representing workers, to ensure that there is appropriate human oversight where automated decision-making is deployed for consequential personnel decisions such as termination and discipline, bias in AI systems is identified and mitigated, and the most invasive forms of AI monitoring, such as social scoring, unlawful surveillance, using tracking tools to undermine worker organizing, and real-time and covert biometric identification, are banned.
• Convening on worker transition: The Administration will convene unions, businesses, and higher education institutions to examine how AI is reshaping Maryland's workforce and to develop shared recommendations for building worker resilience and supporting workers as jobs and skills needs change  — with particular attention to early-career Marylanders entering employment and to mid-career workers who may bear the greatest brunt of AI-driven change with the fewest options to adapt.
• Continuing to invest in reskilling and upskilling: The State will keep investing in reskilling and upskilling, across both the state workforce and the broader Maryland workforce, so that Marylanders stay current as AI evolves and can also build skills in other in-demand fields, deepening the training partnerships, registered apprenticeships, and clinics already in place. 
• Supporting from school to career: The State will build out support across the full continuum, from school to career — strengthening education, training and career-transition pathways so all Marylanders can build durable skills and navigate changes in the labor market; helping Marylanders turn new skills into new businesses (including workers building a path forward after a job loss), strengthening career-transition to help workers move into good new jobs, and working with training providers, colleges and universities to keep programs aligned with the skills employers actually need.
• Preventing discriminatory deployment of workplace AI: As noted in Section I, MCCR and the Department of Labor, with DBM and DoIT for State workers, will issue coordinated guidance explaining how existing discrimination laws already apply when AI is the mechanism, to ensure individuals' civil rights are protected in the workplace.

Principle 3: Our Children Must Be Protected from Exploitation and Harm

Children are especially vulnerable to AI and algorithmic systems built to capture their attention, collect their data, or expose them to harmful or manipulative interactions and they cannot be expected to protect themselves. Maryland has moved early to put children's wellbeing ahead of engagement and profit.

Where Maryland leads today

• The Maryland Kids Code: Online platforms that children are likely to use must activate the strongest privacy settings by default, and are barred from profiling kids or using manipulative "dark pattern" design that keeps them hooked. Products used by children have to be built with kids' best interests in mind, not just engagement and data collection. Maryland was the second state in the country to enact this (Age-Appropriate Design Code Act).
• Guardrails for AI in the classroom: Maryland requires the state to issue guidance on safe, ethical AI use in elementary and secondary education, promote AI literacy, set standards and a rubric for evaluating the AI tools schools buy, and train teachers, while keeping a human educator, not software, at the center of learning. Every district had to adopt its own AI policy this year. The law also creates the Maryland AI Education Collaborative to guide future policy (Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act).
• The Meta settlement: Maryland joined 46 other states, D.C., and three territories in claims that Meta built Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to kids, knew the harm it was causing, and told parents otherwise. Meta agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and to rebuild how its apps work for anyone under 18: a two-hour daily cap parents control, no access between midnight and 6 a.m., no notifications overnight or during school hours, break reminders during long sessions, like counts hidden by default, and options to turn off autoplay and the algorithmic feed. Maryland's share is up to $327 million over ten years (Attorney General Brown announcement, August 2026).

Moving forward

• Protecting young people from unsafe chatbots: The Administration will work with the legislature to strengthen protections related to chatbot use, including requiring a crisis protocol for queries related to suicide or that otherwise show signs of mental health distress, and friction-based protections for users under 16, including in-session warnings.
• Curbing addictive design: The Administration will work with the Attorney General, the legislature and other states to ensure social media platforms are not using artificial intelligence and algorithmic design features to drive addictive and harmful engagement among users under 16, such as infinite scroll, late-night push notifications, personalized feeds, and autoplay videos, building on the successful multi-state lawsuit, K.G.M. v. Meta.  
• Extend Maryland's crisis-response safety net into the classroom. Building on the Administration's work to support students in crisis, the Administration will work with the Maryland State Department of Education and the legislature to require schools to implement a human escalation protocol for any AI tool a student interacts with at school, ensuring that at the first sign of a student in crisis or distress, a trusted adult is looped in. 
• Implement a “do no harm” policy for AI use in schools. The Administration will work with districts, educators, and unions that represent them to ensure that any AI tools in classrooms have demonstrated outcomes for student learning, are supplementing educator instruction, and that families are informed before use. This will ensure Maryland classrooms are focused on screen value over screen time. 
• Ensure our students are ready for an AI shaped world. The Maryland State Department of Education will issue model K-12 lesson plans for schools to implement that help students understand what AI is and isn't, make safe and ethical choices, and get them ready for an AI-shaped world.