Survey ordered by Gov. Reeves shows many Mississippi agencies are embracing AI use

As Mississippi’s state government agencies embrace artificial intelligence, or AI, in their work, officials say human oversight remains essential.

Mississippi defines AI in part as “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.“

In January 2025, Gov. Tate Reeves issued an executive order directing the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services to survey and evaluate state agencies’ use of AI and develop AI use policy recommendations. For the survey, called the Mississippi State Agency AI Inventory, each state agency had to submit either a standardized report listing current and potential AI use or a letter stating no plans to use any. 

Out of 98 entities that responded, a little over half were using or planning to use AI. 

The Mississippi Department of Transportation, for instance, is working on AI projects for querying crash data, automating quality control across documentation and more.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality uses Grammarly, ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot and other programs for things such as research, drafting emails and calculations. The agency also uses several cybersecurity services, including Rubrik, Proofpoint and Silversky.

A cumulative total of 243 active or planned AI projects were reported across 44 agencies. The majority of AI projects, or 82%, were rated low-risk, and 69.5% relied solely on human decision making.

MDOT and MDEQ are among the five agencies that, when combined, account for a significant amount of AI usage across all state agencies, or 35%. The other three are the Department of Employment Security, the Department of Information Technology Services and the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Mississippi Today made a public records request for the completed inventory surveys from the these five agencies, and asked further questions about their AI use. 

ITS did not fulfill the public records request, citing an exception in the executive order. The Department of Employment Security and the Arts Commission provided their completed surveys, but did not respond to detailed questions. 

“Our annual AI inventory is designed to capture a point-in-time snapshot during the second quarter of each calendar year,” explained ITS chief strategy officer Stephanie Hedgepeth. “We then analyze the data during the third quarter, with the report targeted for publication on the ITS website early in the fourth quarter.”

Hedgepeth said that while AI isn’t new, what is new is how accessible it’s become because of generative AI tools. Generative AI is an advanced form of AI that can create new content.

She, as well as leaders and spokespeople for the departments of Environmental Quality and Transportation, emphasized that AI is a tool to assist humans, not replace them. 

Paul Katool, MDOT’s deputy director of public affairs, explained that AI use is rapidly growing across the agency. 

“It enhances efficiency, enabling our existing staff to complete more work – often faster – without increasing headcount or overall labor costs,” he said.

“The reality is that we have fewer staff than we have ever had historically,” said Chris Wells, the Department of Environmental Quality’s executive director. At the same time, their workload has arguably increased. 

A 2025 national report found that MDEQ’s staff decreased by 17% between 2010 and 2024, and funding decreased by 71% in the same time frame. Records show that the agency’s total appropriations, including state funding and fees collected for services, dropped by over a quarter between fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2025.

Though most AI projects took a careful approach, the report found that governance hasn’t kept pace with adoption. The findings include recommendations for improvement, such as stronger protections for confidential data and communication, stronger accessibility and mitigating bias and misinformation for public-facing AI tools.

“Each agency is responsible for governing its use of AI in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, policies and requirements,” wrote Hedgepeth in an email.

ITS adopted the Acceptable Use Policy for Artificial Intelligence, which is meant to be a resource for state agencies to create their own AI policies.

The Mississippi Artificial Intelligence Regulation Task Force was established in 2025 to analyze all things related to regulating AI in Mississippi until 2027, and to report its findings and recommendations to the state Legislature annually. One of the recommendations the task force adopted was that state agencies disclose to citizens when they are engaging with an AI system.

The Department of Transportation issued its AI use policy in February. The Department of Environmental Quality and the Arts Commission are still developing theirs. 

Even without an AI policy, agencies still have rules. For the tools identified in their AI inventory report, employees at the Department of Environmental Quality are responsible for reviewing AI-generated information before using it. AI is not used to make decisions, either. The Arts Commission recently started requiring grant applications to disclose AI use.

Mississippi currently has a handful of AI laws, but the attorney general’s office determined that Mississippi has no overarching AI framework, according to the state’s Artificial Intelligence Regulation task force’s report.

Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to limit states’ ability to regulate AI. 

Republican Sen. Bart Williams of Starkville, co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Regulation task force and chair of the Mississippi Senate Technology Committee, doesn’t believe the president’s executive order will impact AI regulation in Mississippi.

“I think we’re gonna look at what’s best for our citizens and what we need to do for them,” he said.

Williams said AI will definitely be a topic of conversation in the 2027 legislative session. Many legislators are concerned about AI as it relates to children’s safety online and the workforce. However, he doesn’t know if it will be regulated.

The task force’s panelists recommended taking a “wait and see” approach. The report states the AG’s office recommended monitoring how the order impacts existing computer-related state laws that do not mention AI specifically.

Kollin Napier is chief AI officer of the Mississippi Artificial Intelligence Network, the nation’s first statewide AI initiative. MAIN is in partnership with ITS to spearhead usage and adoption. It does not have a regulatory role.

Napier spoke about the importance of governance.     

“That comes as acceptable use. It comes as a statewide framework, structured pilots and so much more. So that way, you don’t have agencies just sort of experimenting in the dark, so to speak,” he said.

The AI Innovation Hub, established by ITS, Amazon Web Services and MAIN, has student teams work on solving AI use cases for state agencies. The teams presented their work at a showcase in May. 

Napier said the return-on-investment for the innovation hub and MAIN’s workforce development efforts are “tremendous.”

Mississippi governmental agencies are part of a growing trend. AI use is prevalent in governmental agencies across the country.

A 2024 survey found that 51% of state, local and federal government employees who responded used AI daily or several times a week. In a Google Public Sector survey of 250 federal IT professionals, 90% said their agencies were already using or planning to use AI.  

Federal agencies are using AI for a variety of projects, from facial recognition systems to helping the public search through historical records.