SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 22 – Maryland's
Attorney General's Office has begun producing records in
response to Inner City Press's public records request on
AI oversight, and the first installment — six documents,
no fee, only signatures redacted — shows a state actively
engaged in a fight larger than any single company or
complaint: whether states get to regulate artificial
intelligence at all.
Maryland signed a May 2025 letter, with
dozens of other attorneys general, opposing a proposed
ten-year congressional moratorium on state AI enforcement,
warning it would gut "hundreds of existing and pending
state laws" on AI-generated deepfakes, algorithmic
rent-setting, and consumer disclosure requirements.
When the moratorium fight resurfaced in a
different form in November 2025, Maryland joined 36 states
again, citing reporting on AI chatbots pushing children
toward "spirals of mental illness, suicide, self-harm, and
violence," and specifically citing reporting on teen
suicides linked to chatbot interactions and Meta's AI
guidelines permitting "sensual" chats with children.
Maryland also joined reply comments filed with the FCC in
December 2025 and January 2026, opposing the Commission's
suggestion that it could preempt state AI laws under its
authority over wireline and wireless deployment — arguing
the FCC's proposed reach was so broad it could bar a state
court from disciplining a lawyer who filed a brief full of
AI-hallucinated citations. And in May 2026, Maryland
joined a letter opposing the federal KIDS Act, arguing the
bill would preempt stronger state protections while
carving out a loophole for AI chatbots deemed merely
"incidental" to a platform's purpose.
What the first production does not yet
show: any of Maryland's own consumer complaints about AI
companies, any records of the state's role in the reported
42-state coalition investigation of OpenAI, or
communications specific to Maryland enforcement action.
Inner City Press has asked for those in the next rolling
installment, expected under the schedule Maryland proposed
and Inner City Press accepted. Watch this site
