Florida’s attorney general asked a judge to restrict children’s access to Meta’s platforms, won a court ruling allowing a social-media ban for minors and sued messaging platform Discord for allegedly failing to protect children from predators. That was all in just one week earlier this month. Florida has staked a position as one of the most aggressive states taking on artificial intelligence and Big Tech, bucking President Trump and channeling growing consumer anxieties about AI.

Spearheaded by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, both Republicans, the multi-front effort aims to rein in AI model development, guard consumer privacy and protect minors from social-media harms. DeSantis “was very early to understand what people actually wanted with AI,” said Max Tegmark, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who spoke at two of the governor’s roundtables on the subject this year.

“They wanted a productivity tool, but not their kids having an AI girlfriend, or building a digital god.”The Sunshine State is at the forefront of a movement gathering momentum in other states as public sentiment turns against data centers and worries mount about uncontrolled AI agents hacking websites and the technology’s potential to upend the job market. Congressional and state lawmakers are wrestling with how to respond to an industry that presents such extreme promise and peril.

Florida has long resisted huge data centers. Its latest moves include a criminal probe into OpenAI launched in April after reviewing communications between the suspected gunman in a 2025 fatal shooting at Florida State University and ChatGPT, the company’s chatbot. In June, Florida became the first state to file a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, saying the company knowingly released an unsafe product that facilitates self-harm and violence.

In September, Uthmeier asked the court for a temporary injunction barring OpenAI from developing new models without safety guardrails. Uthmeier asked a different court this month for a temporary injunction ordering stronger protections for children on Meta’s platforms. Florida is also one of two states—along with New Mexico—to reject an $18 billion settlement with Meta over child-safety claims. Last week, the attorney general pitched a new bill that would include required age determination and parental consent for minors downloading apps.“Parents deserve real control, and companies must design for safety, not addiction,” Uthmeier said in announcing the measure.

An OpenAI spokesperson previously said ChatGPT “is not responsible for this terrible crime,” regarding the Florida State shooting. Separately, the spokesperson said, “We’re committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company.”

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. Meta declined to comment. A Discord spokesperson said the company’s safety systems include advanced technology and human-led investigations, and that the Florida lawsuit’s “characterization of Discord does not reflect the platform we have built.”DeSantis, now wrapping up his second term, has taken a populist position that casts Big Tech as concentrating an enormous amount of power that threatens society and especially children, said Daniel Castro, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which favors accelerating deployment of AI with targeted interventions.

This stance puts DeSantis at odds with the Trump administration, which favors a light touch with the AI industry as the U.S. competes with China for AI dominance. An executive order Trump signed in December 2025 said AI companies “must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.”It directed his administration to act with Congress to ensure a “minimally burdensome national standard—not 50 discordant state ones.”

But many states, especially Democratic-leaning ones, are now pushing aggressively to govern and restrict tech companies. California passed laws including one that creates a regulatory framework for the most advanced AI models. New York passed a law that creates safety and transparency requirements for such models. Florida got off to a fast start. At news conferences and roundtables in the past few years, DeSantis has warned that unbridled AI development challenges human agency, constitutional liberties and economic stability.

The technology, he often says, should enhance the human experience, not supplant it.“It’s maybe the most fundamental issue that we’re going to confront over the next many, many years,” DeSantis said last year, when he signed a bill requiring online platforms to create a removal system for AI-generated or altered sexual images of people. DeSantis’s and Uthmeier’s offices didn’t respond to requests for comment.AI and data centers have figured prominently in the Florida gubernatorial race this year.

Republican Byron Donalds, endorsed by Trump, regards AI as an economic driver—though he advocates for protecting children from its harms—and thinks data-center decisions should be made by local governments. Democrat David Jolly sees benefits from AI but thinks its development needs to be slowed—and says he would issue a moratorium on hyperscale data centers. DeSantis appointed Uthmeier, his former chief of staff, as attorney general last year to succeed Ashley Moody when she was named a U.S. senator.

Uthmeier is now running for a full term, and his campaign has highlighted his legal actions against major tech companies. DeSantis has hit some walls in his push against Big Tech, including from the courts and lawmakers.

In December 2025, the governor pitched a proposal for an AI bill of rights with enhanced protections for consumers and minors. He was joined at the press conference by Megan Garcia, an Orlando mother who said her 14-year-old son died by suicide after conversing romantically with a chatbot from Character.AI that urged him to “come home” after he confided that he was thinking of taking his life. “If an adult had engaged in this behavior, that adult would be in jail,” Garcia said.

She sued and settled with the company that operates Character.AI early this year. At the time, Character.AI said the company had “taken innovative and decisive steps with regard to AI safety and teens.”

The bill of rights proposal passed the Florida Senate earlier this year but died in the House, where Speaker Daniel Perez aligned himself with the Trump administration and said AI regulation was better left to the federal government.

At a time of rapid change and uncertainty, there is a risk some laws that aren’t well-conceived could stifle innovation and legitimate consumer uses, said Jane Bambauer, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.“We don’t quite understand what technology is doing to society,” Bambauer said. “If we don’t know that, we’re legislating from the hip.”

Among other Florida moves, a 2024 law prohibited children under 14 from creating social-media accounts while setting parental consent requirements for 14- and 15-year-olds.

Industry trade groups challenged it in court on free-speech grounds and won a preliminary injunction, but that was recently reversed in Florida’s favor. That law has forced some tech companies to remove accounts for children under age 14, said Edward Longe, director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the James Madison Institute, which promotes free-market policies. The law also set a template by going after “addictive features,” such as infinite scrolling, rather than content.“You’ve seen other states copy that approach since,” Longe said.

Write to Arian Campo-Flores at arian.campo-flores@wsj.com