Requires licensed mental health professionals seeking to offer AI-assisted mental health services to obtain approval from a licensing board, inform patients about AI use, and obtain patient consent; requires AI systems delivering mental health services to prioritize patient safety and well-being. Imposes disciplinary action by a licensing board for violations.
Analysis summaries, actor details, and coverage mappings were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
This is a binding legal statute enacted by the Massachusetts General Laws with mandatory requirements, licensing board approval mechanisms, and explicit disciplinary penalties for violations.
The document has minimal to good coverage of approximately 5-6 subdomains, with primary focus on human-computer interaction risks (5.1, 5.2), AI system safety and robustness (7.3), governance structures (6.5), and privacy considerations (2.1). Coverage is concentrated in patient safety, informed consent, and professional oversight domains.
This document exclusively governs the Health Care and Social Assistance sector, specifically regulating the use of AI in mental health services provided by licensed mental health professionals. No other sectors are mentioned or governed.
The document primarily focuses on the Deploy and Operate and Monitor stages of the AI lifecycle, with requirements for licensing board approval before deployment and continuous monitoring during operation. There is implicit coverage of Verify and Validate through the approval process and safety requirements.
The document explicitly mentions AI and AI systems in the context of mental health services. It provides a broad definition of AI including natural language processing, training language models, reinforcement learning from human feedback, and machine learning systems. There is no mention of frontier AI, general purpose AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds.
Massachusetts Legislature (General Court of Massachusetts)
The document is a legislative act amending Chapter 123 of the General Laws, indicating it was proposed and enacted by the Massachusetts state legislature.
Professional licensing boards in Massachusetts (relevant to mental health professions)
The document explicitly designates professional licensing boards as the enforcement authority with power to approve AI use and impose disciplinary action for violations.
Professional licensing boards and licensed mental health professionals themselves
The act requires continuous monitoring by licensed mental health professionals and implies oversight by licensing boards through their approval and disciplinary functions.
Licensed mental health professionals in Massachusetts (psychiatrists, psychologists, LMHCs, LICSWs, and other professional counselors) who use or wish to use AI systems in providing mental health services
The act explicitly targets licensed mental health professionals who provide or wish to provide AI-assisted mental health services, requiring them to obtain approval, inform patients, and obtain consent.
6 subdomains (4 Good, 2 Minimal)