SPRINGFIELD — With less than three weeks left in its spring legislative session, members of the Illinois General Assembly are pushing to pass legislation responding to the rise of artificial intelligence and what they view as the Trump administration’s failure to shield the public from its potential harms.
Senate Democrats on Wednesday outlined a range of proposals, including for education, consumer protection and data privacy, that could serve as guardrails to the technology. Republican lawmakers, as they have during previous AI debates in the Democratic-controlled legislature, cautioned that such measures could hinder innovation.
There’s a “sense of urgency” to act, Democratic state Sen. Bill Cunningham of Chicago said at a statehouse news conference, because “the federal government has taken no substantive action on this subject matter, despite the expansive and continually growing role AI plays in our lives.”
“We hope that by joining together with a few other states who have implemented AI regulation, like California and New York, we can help create a national standard,” he said.
Days into Republican President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration rescinded a 2023 executive order from Democratic President Joe Biden that emphasized the “highest urgency on governing the development and use of AI safely and responsibly,” replacing it with a declaration that “revokes certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation.”
One bill from state Sen. Mary Edly-Allen, a Democrat from Grayslake, would require AI developers such as ChatGPT to file “an independent third-party” annual report with the state detailing how they would mitigate “catastrophic risks, provide transparency reports and report critical safety incidents,” she said. Companies would have 72 hours to report such incidents after learning of them or 24 hours if the incident poses “an imminent risk of death or serious physical harm,” she said.
“This is not about stopping innovation, but rather about balancing the great promise of AI with its potential harms. This bill would simply require large AI developers to provide transparency and undergo independent third-party audits to honor whistleblower protections,” Edly-Allen said. “Sounds like common sense to me.”
OpenAI expressed support for the bill in a prepared statement, saying, “as AI systems become more powerful, clear rules around safety, transparency, incident reporting, and accountability are increasingly important.” The company said while the U.S. should ultimately adopt national standards, “state efforts like this one in Illinois — alongside legislation already in place in California and New York — are helping to create a de facto nationwide approach.”
Democratic state Sen. Laura Ellman of Naperville discussed a bill that would require AI companies to detect signs a user may be suicidal or on the verge of self-harm, work to prevent such harm and refer the person to a crisis service such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
“We’ve all heard these types (of) stories in the news. A teenager struggling with their mental health, they’re embarrassed or don’t know where to turn. (So) they turn to AI and share their thoughts. But AI isn’t necessarily trained in crisis response, especially as it relates to mental health,” Ellman said. “Due to a lack of proper intervention, the teenager can commit self-harm and, in some cases, die by suicide after confiding with an artificial intelligence chatbot. That is unacceptable.”
Democratic state Sen. Rachel Ventura of Joliet detailed legislation requiring businesses to notify customers at the start of a phone call that they are interacting with an automated system. AI can handle simple questions, she said, but frequently fails when consumers face complex or urgent problems.
“Customers are often trapped in repetitive loops, given scripted responses that do not address their specific concerns and left without a clear path to speak to human representation. This process can turn what should have been a quick resolution into an exhausting ordeal,” Ventura said. “Just as importantly, (automated) systems lack the empathy and human (understanding) that are essential when people are dealing with billing disputes, service interruptions and other stressful situations.”
State Sen. Laura Murphy, a Democrat from Des Plaines, discussed a bill to prohibit companies from selling consumers’ most sensitive data without first giving them a chance to opt out. She used targeted advertising as a prime example of how companies collect and monetize user data.
Illinois has notched several AI-related legislative wins in recent years. In 2023, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill making anyone civilly liable for digitally altering images of another person in a sexually explicit manner. In 2024, he signed a measure barring the use of AI to generate child pornography, making possession of such images a felony. In the final days of last year’s spring session, lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting AI chatbots from posing as licensed mental health providers.
State Rep. Jeff Keicher, a Republican from Sycamore and a point person for the Illinois House GOP on AI-related matters, said he welcomes the Senate Democrats’ focus on potential harms but warned against overregulation.
“I find it interesting that they’re addressing this only in the AI space, when time and again, we have seen bad actors, such as Instagram and Facebook, have situations where they have put children and vulnerable folks in dangerous positions,” Keicher said. “These other social media companies have been using algorithms for years, and we’ve done nothing. When we look at the explosive nature of AI and how quickly it is iterating, this is going to be outdated before the governor signs the legislation, if he chooses to do so.”