MontanaAI regulation

Regulation Status

• Montana regulates AI through a series of targeted, sector-specific statutes rather than a single comprehensive AI act. Senate Bill 212, the Montana Right to Compute Act, requires deployers of critical-infrastructure facilities controlled in whole or in part by a critical AI system to adopt a reasonable risk-management policy that considers the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, the ISO/IEC 42001 standard, or another nationally or internationally recognized AI risk-management framework.
• On personal data, the Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (Mont. Code Ann. Sec. 30-14-2801 et seq.) grants consumers a right to opt out of automated processing of personal data used to evaluate, analyze, or predict personal aspects of an identified or identifiable individual in furtherance of decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects, and requires a data-protection assessment for each such processing activity.
• During the 2025 session Montana enacted a cluster of AI measures: House Bill 178 limits state and local government use of AI by barring manipulative, discriminatory, malicious, or certain public-surveillance uses, requiring disclosure of public-facing or unreviewed AI-produced government material, and mandating human review of AI recommendations or decisions affecting rights or privileges; Senate Bill 25 restricts official election actors from sponsoring known AI deepfake election communications within 60 days of an election unless a statutory disclosure is included.
• Montana further criminalized AI-enabled abuse of likeness and intimate imagery. Senate Bill 413 established the Explicit Synthetic Media Law, prohibiting knowing disclosure or threats to disclose explicit synthetic media without consent or with intent to harm; House Bill 514 amended the privacy-in-communications offense (Mont. Code Ann. Sec. 45-8-213) to cover possession and threatened disclosure of real or digitally fabricated sexual deepfakes for extortionate purposes.
• House Bill 513 created a property right in an individual's name, voice, and visual likeness, making unauthorized commercial digital voice or visual depictions unlawful and extending liability to distribution of tools or services knowingly intended for such unauthorized uses; violators are liable for actual damages and profits from the unauthorized use.