MONTGOMERY, Ala. – As the use of artificial intelligence spreads to all corners of life, Alabama lawmakers are introducing bills to put a few limits on how Alabamians interact with AI.
The bills touch on health care, content disclosures, age verification and deceptive content.
How are Alabamians using AI?
AI is everywhere. Web browsers now include AI assistants like Gemini, Google searches spit out aggregated results written up by AI and generative AI platforms read whole books and write essays in seconds. Like the country as a whole, lots of people in Alabama are using AI.
Because much of AI use is personal – like asking AI to make a dinner recipe out of what you have left in your pantry or removing a few people from the background of your vacation photos – it’s hard to say how many people are using it or how often.
But data shows AI usage is widespread in the private sector in Alabama.
Fifty-seven percent of small businesses in Alabama use an AI platform and 42% are using generative AI, according to a report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The public sector, including state government, has been slower to adopt the new technology, but employees are still using it.
Gov. Kay Ivey formed the Alabama AI Task Force in early 2024 to produce a report about how state agencies could best use generative AI to improve efficiency. The task force’s March 2025 report found that around 25% of state agencies were using generative AI at the time – mostly for text generation, translation, coding and problem solving.
This year’s patchwork of proposed legislation comes after President Donald Trump signed in December an executive order that limits states’ ability to regulate AI, instead establishing a national policy framework. States with “onerous” AI laws will be made ineligible to receive Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding, the order says. Alabama received $1.4 billion in BEAD funding in late 2024.
AI in health care
Health care is a major issue for this legislative session, and that includes how AI will affect medicine and health insurance.
Senate Bill 63 would prohibit health insurance companies from using exclusively artificial intelligence to make coverage determinations and require a human to make the final decision to deny or reduce coverage. It would also require the companies to disclose to subscribers if AI is being used in making decisions.
“We don’t want machines making the healthcare decisions, as far as their ability to get the healthcare that they need,” sponsor Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said. “A human needs to be making the final decision to deny or reduce or delay some kind of procedure or pharma for an insured (person).”
Orr introduced a more comprehensive bill about prior authorizations last session, but it was never voted on in committee. Last year’s bill included a detail about how insurance companies can use AI.
Orr said this new bill is to require human oversight for important health care determinations that affect people’s everyday lives and to make sure that each Alabamian’s claim is evaluated individually.
“I think it’s an important policy for our state to adopt,” Orr said. “I also doubt that patients that are in the medical system are aware that AI can be making coverage decisions for them and having machines affecting their lives through these healthcare decisions made by insurers.”
BlueCross Blue Shield is the largest health insurer in Alabama and holds 94% of the market share in the large group market, according to health policy research group KFF. Sophie Martin, director of corporate communications and community relations for BCBS, said the company and its contracted vendors already do not use AI in final determinations on prior authorization requests.
“While we evaluate emerging technologies to improve administrative efficiency, we remain committed at this time to ensuring that determinations affecting our members’ care are made through a thorough, human‑led review process,” Martin said in a written statement to ADN.
Outside of insurance, Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, filed a bill that would create the Alabama Health Command, a state agency to oversee the implementation of AI in health care, especially in rural areas.
As rural communities struggle to attract medical staff and rural hospitals close because of funding shortcomings, the Alabama Health Command would help hospitals and care centers leverage AI to provide care when providers are not available.
“A system of providing for virtual encounters with patients using an avatar-based technology would facilitate meaningful communication with a patient and provide ease of access for the patient to connect with an appropriate rural health care provider,” Senate Bill 97 reads.
The proposed agency would be responsible for creating standards about how AI platforms can operate in the health care setting.
In a press conference last week, Kevin Foote – CEO of Tuscaloosa-based artificial intelligence health care provider FastHealth – demonstrated how AI can already answer medical questions. Instead of seeing a human doctor, patients could ask chatbots questions or speak with a virtual avatar of a doctor.
FastHealth already partners with several hospitals in the state and holds a patent related to targeted advertising in virtual health settings.
Neither of the health care bills has been put on the House Committee on Healthcare’s agenda.
Other AI bills
Rep. Parker Moore, R-Hartselle, introduced House Bill 324 to require AI chatbots to have age verification systems and stop minors from interacting with AI that has “human-like features.” It would also require AI to detect and deal with situations where users express intentions to harm themselves or others. The bill would allow licensed psychiatrists to prescribe therapy chatbots to minors.
Senate Bill 129, filed by Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, would require content created by AI to include a disclosure that it is AI-generated. This disclosure would have to be easy to see or hear as well as unable to be removed.
Rep. Juandalyn Givan, D-Birmingham, introduced House Bill 291 to make it a crime to distribute “materially deceptive media.” This would include photos and videos – like deepfakes – created by AI that depict someone doing or saying something they never did. The proposed legislation would also create a disclosure requirement similar to that of SB 129 for content altered by AI.