Introduction

Georgia has emerged as one of the most dynamic technology markets in the southeastern United States. Anchored by Atlanta as a thriving innovation hub, the state is home to a growing number of artificial intelligence companies and data centres, and is a leader in AI across a multitude of industries, including healthcare, logistics, and manufacturing. As artificial intelligence has continued to reshape these industries, Georgia’s policymakers and regulators have taken a measured approach to governing AI-related risks.

The state does not have a comprehensive AI-specific regulation like those that have been enacted in other jurisdictions. However, there has been active engagement by legislators during the 2026 legislative session, and a clear regulatory picture is emerging through a combination of executive-level policy and recently enacted legislation. For businesses operating in Georgia or looking to expand into the state, understanding this evolving landscape is essential.

The following provides an overview of the key legal developments shaping the AI landscape in Georgia, highlights the regulatory risks, and provides practical guidance and best practices for organisations to consider in navigating these issues.

Georgia’s AI Leadership: How the State Supports AI Innovation

The Senate Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence

Georgia’s legislative approach to AI has been shaped significantly by the Senate Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence, a legislative body created in 2024. At the time of formation, the Senate Study Committee was tasked with examining current and future uses of AI technologies in the state for the purposes of:

• determining appropriate policies and procedures to implement in Georgia concerning the development, procurement, and utilisation of AI tools by state agencies;
• reviewing the potential impacts of AI technology on the workforce across industries;
• examining the potential misuse and unintended consequences of AI; and
• exploring the best paths forward to promote responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration across public and private sectors in Georgia, and ensuring that AI technology advances in a way that enforces existing consumer protection laws and enacts necessary additional safeguards against fraud, unintended bias, discrimination, and other potential harms.

In December 2024, the Senate Study Committee issued a report with 22 recommendations covering state and local government AI use, education and workforce development, public safety, healthcare, transparency and accountability, and sector-specific findings for entertainment, agriculture, and manufacturing. The report reflected an explicit commitment to striking a balance between innovation and protection. Instead of recommending sweeping prohibitions and regulations, the Senate Study Committee called for targeted interventions like deepfake legislation, data privacy guardrails, and accountability mechanisms for government AI deployment.

The Georgia Technology Authority framework

Georgia’s most developed AI governance framework has been spearheaded by the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) and its Enterprise AI Responsible Use Policy (PS-23-001) governing state agencies. Under this policy, all executive-branch state agencies are required to submit AI tools and systems to the GTA for review and approval before procurement and deployment. This applies to a wide array of AI applications, from automated transcription and note-taking applications to workflow tools.

Accompanying the policy is the AI Responsible Use Standard SS-23-002, which sets out detailed technical and governance requirements for Georgia state agencies that use AI. Contractors providing AI-enabled services to the state must also comply with this standard, including providing documentation of their responsible AI frameworks, bias-mitigation procedures, and data retention policies. The GTA retains the right to audit any AI tool and to revoke approval if a system generates outputs that pose risks to data privacy, security, or the state’s reputation.

In 2025, the GTA expanded this framework with Generative AI Responsible Use Standard SS-25-001, which imposes additional obligations specific to generative AI systems. Under this standard, all AI-generated content used in an official capacity must be reviewed by qualified personnel before use, labelled to identify the AI tool used, and supported by a record of the prompt, the output, and the identity of the reviewer. State agencies must also conduct annual audits of their generative AI systems and report significant incidents to the GTA Office of Artificial Intelligence within 48 hours.

Georgia’s legislative framework

Georgia’s legislative approach to AI has been shaped significantly by the Senate Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence, a legislative body created in 2024. At the time of formation, the Senate Study Committee was tasked with examining current and future uses of AI technologies in the state for the purposes of:

• determining appropriate policies and procedures to implement in Georgia concerning the development, procurement, and utilisation of AI tools by state agencies;
• reviewing the potential impacts of AI technology on the workforce across industries;
• examining the potential misuse and unintended consequences of AI; and
• exploring the best paths forward to promote responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration across public and private sectors in Georgia, and ensuring that AI technology advances in a way that enforces existing consumer protection laws and enacts necessary additional safeguards against fraud, unintended bias, discrimination, and other potential harms.

AI initiatives by the State Bar and Judicial Council of Georgia

Beyond legislative and executive-branch developments, the State Bar and Judicial Council of Georgia have been actively addressing the implications of AI within the legal profession through concerted initiatives. In September 2024, the State Bar of Georgia announced the formation of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology, chaired by attorney Darrell Sutton and created by former State Bar President Ivy N. Cadle (Note: Ivy N. Cadle is a shareholder with Baker Donelson), to study the ethical use and application of generative AI in the practice of law. The Special Committee meets monthly to examine whether the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct sufficiently address technology-related conduct of Georgia attorneys and how the State Bar can assist its members in incorporating AI into their practices. The committee’s efforts resulted in the introduction of the Generative AI Toolkit, designed to educate members on best practices for using AI and to promote ethical adoption consistent with professional responsibilities relating to client confidentiality, competence, and the unauthorised practice of law. The Special Committee also moved forward with proposed changes to the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct to classify AI tools as non-lawyer assistants. Georgia attorneys using AI-related tools, from case analysis to document drafting, are now specifically required to bear the same supervisory duties traditionally associated with overseeing paralegals and law clerks. Accordingly, it is incumbent upon attorneys to verify the output generated by AI tools for accuracy, confidentiality, and compliance with ethical standards.

In a related effort, in August 2024, the Judicial Council of Georgia Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Courts, chaired by Justice Andrew A. Pinson, was launched to proactively examine the responsible use and deployment of AI technologies within the state’s judicial system. In June 2025, the committee published its report, “Artificial Intelligence and the Georgia Courts”, recommending a human-centric approach to enhance AI transparency and oversight. The report outlines key strategies to mitigate risks of fully automated decision-making that adversely impact individuals’ access to justice.

Recent legislative activity

The 2025–2026 legislative session in Georgia marked a turning point for AI policy in the state. Georgia legislators introduced more than a dozen AI-related bills addressing topics ranging from child safety to healthcare and product liability. By the time the legislative session adjourned in April 2026, two key AI-related bills had been approved:

• SB 540: Chatbot Disclosure and Child Safety – The bill amends Georgia’s Online Internet Safety provisions to impose specific obligations on operators of chatbots and conversational AI technologies. Specifically, the law requires such operators to disclose to users that they are interacting with an AI system and not a real person and are prohibited from providing rewards to increase engagement. Operators are also required to institute reasonable age verification methods and adopt protocols for the AI technology to respond to a user prompt regarding thoughts of suicide or self-harm, including referring the user to crisis service providers. Importantly, there is no exception for chatbots embedded within larger platforms, meaning that the bill could have broad application. The bill reflects a growing trend of state legislatures focusing on the specific risks that conversational chatbots pose to minors.
• SB 444: Prohibition on AI-Only Health Insurance Coverage Decisions – The legislature also passed SB 444, which prohibits adverse health insurance coverage determinations from being based solely on AI systems or software tools. Instead, the bill requires a qualified clinical peer to conduct a utilisation review and participate in the decision-making process, and the AI system cannot override the peer’s judgement. This addresses a growing national concern about automated denial systems replacing clinical and actuarial judgement in the insurance industry. The bill was sent to Governor Brian Kemp in April 2026 and remains pending.
• SR 789: Georgia Senate Study Committee on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence – The Senate passed SR 789 to create a Senate Study Committee on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence. Building on the prior Senate Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence formed in 2024, this committee was created to evaluate the impact of AI on creative writers, filmmakers, and television to, according to the Senate, ensure that one of Georgia’s top industries continues to thrive. The committee will remain in effect until 1 December 2026.

Although comprehensive private-sector AI regulation did not pass during the 2026 legislative session, the breadth of proposals makes clear that Georgia’s legislature is considering AI regulation across virtually every industry. Organisations should not interpret the absence of enacted legislation as an absence of interest and should be mindful that more substantive legislation could be coming to Georgia sooner rather than later.

Practical Guidance and Best Practices

Given the current regulatory landscape, businesses operating in Georgia should proactively establish a structured framework of written policies, oversight mechanisms, and deployment strategies to optimise responsible use of AI (known as “AI governance”). Rather than waiting for prescriptive mandates at federal or state levels, forward-thinking organisations should align their AI governance programmes with the following principles: Legal Compliance, Operational Resilience, Responsible Deployment, and Data Stewardship.

• Legal Compliance: AI impact assessments are central to mitigating enterprise risk exposure. Regulators and plaintiffs’ attorneys are increasingly turning to existing federal and state statutes – eg, the FTC Act and state consumer protection laws, to bring AI-related claims. Before deploying any AI system, companies must identify and evaluate whether outputs generated can materially affect individuals’ rights, opportunities, or well-being, including in areas such as employment decisions, credit determinations, healthcare, or access to essential services. To keep pace with emerging laws and regulations governing AI use cases, businesses should implement a scalable process, known as the AI Impact Assessment (AIIA), that evaluates each AI tool’s accuracy, explainability, and fairness against current and upcoming regulatory requirements. These assessments should be documented and updated regularly to serve as a defensible record of AI due diligence and accountability.
• Operational Resilience Against AI-related Failures: Many businesses deploy AI through third-party vendors and software-as-a-service platforms rather than building systems in-house. A key dimension of operational resilience is AI concentration risk, arising from a company’s over-dependence on a small number of external providers, infrastructure layers, or data centres located in certain geographic regions. Any failure of these providers of infrastructure AI models could disrupt business continuity and major operational functions. Contracts with these AI vendors should include provisions addressing model shifting, response plans for incidents caused by AI tools, data export, transition assistance, indemnification for AI-related harms, and the AI vendor’s obligation to comply with applicable laws. As AI concentration has increasingly become a hidden architecture issue, organisations must implement contingency plans to mitigate dependency on one or more primary AI providers.
• Responsible AI Deployment: Companies should preserve meaningful human oversight of AI-driven decision-making processes, particularly those affecting individuals’ access to financial or lending services, housing, education, enrolment opportunities, or healthcare. Companies should not assume that outsourcing AI functionality automatically outsources legal responsibility. Instead, all AI use cases (including their supporting vendors) should be recorded as a part of the AIIA programme. For business-critical or regulated activities, AI-generated outputs should always go through human-in-the-loop review by qualified personnel to mitigate legal risks and reputational exposure.
• Data Stewardship: Data is the bedrock of all AI systems. That is why organisations must continuously monitor and enforce best practice protocols governing data collection, storage, use, distribution, and disposal. Data stewardship also depends on strong data privacy practices to define permissible data use and ownership, such as careful contracting with data brokers and implementing third-party due diligence. Without accountability for data sources and distribution, enterprises cannot achieve reliable outputs and compliance across the life cycle of their AI use cases.

Conclusion

Taken together, the foregoing principles provide a comprehensive foundation for Georgia businesses to fully harness the benefits of AI-driven innovation. Though Georgia has not passed comprehensive AI-specific legislation, the combined efforts of the Senate Study Committee, the GTA’s governance frameworks, guidelines from the State Bar and Judicial Council, and forthcoming regulations all indicate that a significant regulatory foundation is taking shape. Organisations that invest in AI impact assessments, vendor due diligence, human-in-the-loop safeguards, and sound data-sourcing practices will be best positioned to navigate the emerging regulatory landscape.