North Dakota AI Legislation in 2026

The North Dakota Picture

North Dakota has not enacted a single comprehensive artificial intelligence statute, and as of June 2026 it does not have one in the pipeline because the Legislative Assembly is biennial and does not hold a regular session in even-numbered years. What North Dakota has instead is a cluster of narrow, problem-specific laws passed in the 2025 regular session, layered on top of a distinctive 2023 measure that resolved the AI personhood question before most states even considered it. For executives, the practical takeaway is that compliance here is about discrete use cases, namely elections, sexual imagery, child safety, and health care decisions, rather than a single risk-tiered framework you must map your whole product against.

The most distinctive feature of North Dakota's approach is HB 1361 from 2023, which amended the state's statutory definition of person to declare that artificial intelligence may not be granted personhood or any right that personhood entails, and that an individual's rights are superior to those of AI, animals, environmental elements, and inanimate objects. North Dakota is one of the few states to legislate AI non-personhood directly. The effect is that AI systems in North Dakota cannot hold legal rights, own property, or bear independent legal standing. For builders this is reassuring rather than restrictive: legal accountability for an AI system always rests with the humans and entities that deploy it.

For organizations operating in North Dakota, the concrete obligations are clear and enforceable today. If you generate political or campaign content with AI, you must carry the statutory disclaimer THIS CONTENT GENERATED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE under HB 1167, in force since August 1, 2025. If your platform can produce or host synthetic intimate imagery, HB 1351 exposes you and your users to liability for nonconsensual deepfakes, and HB 1386 makes AI-generated child sexual abuse material a crime with no synthetic defense. If you sell AI tools into health insurance or utilization management, SB 2280, effective January 1, 2026, means a licensed physician, not your model, must make and sign prior-authorization denials.

My guidance to builders is to treat North Dakota as a state that regulates AI outcomes in sensitive domains rather than the technology itself. Build disclosure into any political or impersonation feature, build consent and age-verification controls into anything that can generate imagery of people, keep a human physician in the loop for any clinical or coverage decision, and document that humans, not the model, hold final authority. Because the legislature will not reconvene in regular session until 2027, this body of law is stable for the remainder of 2026.