🔒Meet the owner of a Calif.-based AI firm that’s helped shape CT’s controversial artificial intelligence regulation bill

Rock Vitale is a Pennsylvania native who grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

He went on to earn an international business degree from Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. After graduation, he moved to California and worked in the energy industry for a company that recycled industrial lithium metal batteries.

That raises a question: How did Vitale end up consulting with the Connecticut legislature’s Artificial Intelligence Working Group, a task force created in 2023 and charged with studying AI and developing an artificial intelligence bill of rights?

The 21-member working group issued a report in February 2024 that served as a guide to create a bill to regulate AI in Connecticut. That legislation stalled in the General Assembly last year, in large part because Gov. Ned Lamont opposed it.

Two AI-related bills have been proposed in the 2025 legislative session, including Senate Bill 2, with the low number demonstrating the high priority given to the legislation by Democratic leadership.

The bill’s focus and goals were developed by the working group, which consulted with a variety of experts in the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry.

That’s where Vitale, who now lives in New York, enters the story. He and his business partner, Jack Marchese, developed and founded an AI-related business based in San Diego called Easie.

Vitale’s shift into the AI industry offers some insight into how artificial intelligence uses can be found almost anywhere, and explains how a Keystone State native who lives in New York and has a business in California, can play a role in shaping Connecticut’s AI regulations.

EasieOps

Vitale said his college degree in business was supplemented with courses in computer programming, computer science, math and chemistry.

He put all of that to use with the lithium battery recycling company in California.

“We were working with large corporate clients across 80 different countries to recycle lithium metal batteries, so we had created a lot of automated tracking systems,” he said.

He would later go to work for a biotechnology company in operational excellence. That ultimately led to the development of his own company.

“When I founded Easie in 2018, this idea of what we call tech-enabled operational excellence was really one of our primary focuses,” Vitale said. “In the early stages, it was using AI to process audio files for academic research or public policy.”

Eventually, that shifted into focusing on language processing. The result was EasieOps, AI-enabled software developed in 2022 that can extract data from large documents without the need for manual entry.

“We’re able to reduce manual entry for organizations by, in some cases, up to 99%,” Vitale said.

“It’s basically an integrated system where you pass documents through it — whether that’s a PDF or images or other types of files,” he said. “You can put a document into Dropbox or OneDrive or even your email; EasieOps pulls the data out of the file.”

Once the data is extracted, it can then be used with other business tools, such as Salesforce or an enterprise resource planning system, he said.

In addition to extracting the data, a customer can apply business rules on top of it. “So, for example, if a financial figure is below a certain amount, you can tell it to do this, versus if it’s above an amount, to do this,” Vitale said.

He added that the software is built into a client’s existing system, “so you don’t have to have people rip and replace or install a bunch of whole new software systems. It’s really able to be built into your process.”

The uses for EasieOps are widely varied. Vitale says his company has clients in 38 states, including Connecticut, and 40 industry sectors.

“We’ve got a client in the insurance sector using it to process compliance documentation,” he said. Another Connecticut client is considering using it to process utility bills, while the University of California, Los Angeles, is using it to process historical Japanese protest records from the 1500s.

While he declined to discuss his company’s finances, Vitale did say its revenue is in “the seven-figure range.”

‘Sensible regulation’

With many clients in Connecticut, as well as working with business students at Southern Connecticut State University and assisting the CT Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs, Vitale has spent time in the state.

He became involved with the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, particularly its technology council, which he now chairs.

It was through the chamber that he met Sen. James Maroney (D-Milford), who co-chairs the AI Working Group and co-founded the legislature’s AI Caucus.

Vitale said his interaction with the working group occurred last year, when he participated in strategy sessions with Maroney and his team, as well as other Connecticut organizations.

Maroney said Vitale has provided “valuable expertise” to the working group.

“As we’ve talked through some of the ideas for Senate Bill 2, he’s been helpful,” Maroney said. “(Vitale) is someone who’s developing AI solutions as a small business and has been able to give us his input on the proposed guardrails that we’d like to put in, and that he finds reasonable.”

Vitale said he supports Connecticut’s proposed AI regulation bill, which he describes as “sensible.”

“We believe that sensible regulation can actually lead to higher innovation,” he said. “When people know what the rules of the road are, they’re able to see more clearly what the requirements are.”

Senate Bill 2

Not everyone agrees with that. In addition to Lamont, who opposed the bill last year and has yet to change his position, others have also voiced opposition to at least parts of the AI legislation.

They include Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe, the Connecticut Hospital Association, Connecticut Business & Industry Association and Yankee Institute for Public Policy, among others.

“Being early in regulating a rapidly evolving emergent category with significant economic potential presents its own risks,” O’Keefe testified during a public hearing on the bill. “Rather than being a state that welcomes innovation, we become the only state in the region that resists it.”

Senate Bill 2 seeks to regulate a broad array of AI-related issues. Of particular concern is the regulatory framework the 61-page bill proposes for the private sector’s use of AI technology.

For example, it requires companies to create impact assessments on AI technology they’re developing or using, with the attorney general acting as an enforcer.

In particular, the bill singles out developers and users of “high-risk AI” that, when used, makes, or is a controlling factor in making, a consequential decision on employment opportunities or financial, loan, healthcare, housing, insurance or legal services.

The goal, proponents say, is to ensure AI systems don’t discriminate against or disadvantage people based on ethnicity, race, religion, age or other factors.

“The requirements for conducting impact assessments, maintaining risk management programs, and documenting AI decision-making processes will impose substantial costs on small businesses in Connecticut,” said Connecticut Business & Industry Association Vice President of Public Policy Chris Davis in testimony on the bill. “Many small businesses simply do not have the resources or time to dedicate to comply with the law and may choose not to use beneficial artificial intelligence to create efficiencies that improve productivity, increase tax revenue and grow our economy.”

Industry groups do support some components of Senate Bill 2, particularly measures that aim to boost the state’s AI workforce. For example, the legislation creates a Connecticut AI Academy, Connecticut Technology Advisory Board and enhances DECD’s Technology Talent and Innovation Fund to expand the tech talent pipeline.

It also establishes a regulatory sandbox for AI innovation, to facilitate the development, testing and deployment of new AI systems.

Meantime, a related bill, Senate Bill 1484, was introduced by the Labor and Public Employees Committee and would limit an employer’s use of electronic monitoring and establish various requirements concerning a company’s use of AI systems.

Both bills were recently approved along party-line votes by the Judiciary Committee and moved on to the Senate,.

On May 15, in a late-night vote on a revised bill, the Senate voted 32-4 to approve a revised version of the Senate Bill 2. The revised version was drafted by Maroney and co-sponsored by four Republican senators. 

Sen. Paul Cicarella of North Haven, the ranking Senate Republican on General Law, said the revised measure maintains significant consumer protections but limits the exposure of developers and users to litigation. It remains to be seen whether the revised bill will gain support from Lamont.

Maroney says he and members of the Democratic leadership continue to discuss Senate Bill 2 with the governor’s office.

“I think that most of the economic benefit of artificial intelligence is going to come from businesses being able to deploy and use solutions to make themselves more efficient,” Maroney said. “And so, they want a clear path to understand what can and can’t be done.”

Vitale says he believes some AI regulation is important.

“We definitely believe in things like impact testing and minimizing the chance for algorithmic bias when you’re talking about high-consequence decisions, like whether or not someone receives a loan, or whether someone receives a tenancy at an apartment or a criminal sentence,” he said.