MOORE’S SUMMARY: After months of hearings and behind-closed-doors negotiations, Illinois lawmakers are moving towards a legislative framework for regulating artificial intelligence that has the backing of two of the largest players in the fast-evolving industry.
WHY IT MATTERS: The frontier AI guardrails proposed by Democratic lawmakers in the Illinois Senate earlier this week would largely align with those approved in California and New York. Statehouse sources say an aligned state government regulatory structure is a preferred route for the industry versus a patchwork of different state regulations. Ultimately, though, major players like Anthropic — developer of the AI chatbot Claude — and OpenAI — developer of AI chatbot ChatGPT — would prefer one overarching federal regulation.
But the Trump Administration has taken a largely laissez-faire approach to AI regulation while the Congress has thus far largely avoided legislating on the topic. In that federal absence, large blue states are filling the void. And large companies tend to comply when there’s a uniform approach across the board.
CATASTROPIC RISK: At the center of an eight-bill package introduced in the Senate earlier this week is Senate Bill 315. It would require AI companies with more than $500 million in annual gross revenue to publicly disclose safety frameworks, assess and report catastrophic risks and report AI-related safety incidents to state officials within 72 hours of learning of them; or within 24 hours if there’s risk of serious injury or death.
Illinois’ bill would take things a step further than California and New York in at least one regard: requiring that large AI companies annually retain a third party for an independent audit of the mechanisms they have in place to mitigate catastrophic risks.
“We need to have outside reporting rather than reporting from within,” said state Sen. Mary Edly-Allen, D-Libertyville, the bill’s sponsor.
NEED FOR SPEED: Edly-Allen said lawmakers feel the need for speed, saying that AI right now is “Wild Wild West” even as it quickly becomes omnipresent in people’s lives.
“It took Netflix 10 years to get 100 million users,” Edly-Allen said. “It took Facebook four-and-a-half years, but it only took ChatGPT two months to get 100 million users. So it’s moving at exponential speed. Legislation typically doesn’t move this fast, but we really feel the need to move as fast as possible.”
The Illinois Senate package came together after two marathon subject matter hearings last month where lawmakers heard nearly four-dozen bills filed on the topic. This was coupled with behind-the-scenes discussions involving key industry players, including Anthropic and OpenAI – both of which retained Springfield lobbyists.
“OpenAI supports the Illinois legislature’s efforts to advance frontier AI safety through SB 315,” OpenAI vice president of global policy Ann O’Leary said in a statement to Capitol News Illinois on Wednesday. “As AI systems become more powerful, clear rules around safety, transparency, incident reporting, and accountability are increasingly important. We believe the U.S. should ultimately have national standards for frontier AI safety, but in the absence of federal action, 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.”
James Hartmann, a lobbyist representing Anthropic, told the Senate Executive Committee that the company supports the legislation as well.
HOUSE SIDE: Mirroring their unaligned 2026 session calendars, the House and Senate discussions on AI have largely taken place independent of one another.
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, earlier this year formed an AI working group among House Democrats to form consensus within the caucus on a multi-faceted approach to AI regulation. The House held a subject matter hearing on a number of AI bills earlier this month.
House Bill 4705, sponsored by state Rep. Daniel Didech, D-Buffalo Grove, goes further than Senate Bill 315 by adding a child protection layer of regulation for AI chatbots. It would require large AI companies to report safety incidents involving children to the Illinois attorney general’s office and maintain a child protection plan for chatbots likely to be accessed by minors. That more stringent plan was supported by Anthropic.
Edly-Allen sponsored a Senate version of Didech’s bill before throwing her support to Senate Bill 315, which was the product of negotiations among key stakeholders. Edly-Allen said her change was the result of “recommendations and red lines” that were identified during the negotiating process.
‘DEEP DIVE’: State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, the leader of the House Democrats’ AI working group, told Capitol News Illinois that the caucus is “now in the process of taking a deep dive and really understanding what is substantively in that package.”
“Whatever we do on AI is going to receive intense scrutiny, not only from the federal level, but from stakeholders,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “So we need to make sure that we get it right. We need to make sure that the laws are implementable, they’re enforceable, and they actually address the real harms that we’re seeing in the world.”
WHAT’S NEXT: The Senate Executive Committee advanced the bills to the floor on Thursday. They’re all amended Senate bills, meaning they will have go through the normal legislative process in the House. Not an issue with two full weeks of scheduled session left. But it’s an open question as to whether the two chambers can get on the same page.
For a more detailed listing of the AI bills in the Senate package, please check out my colleague Jenna Schweikert’s story on our main page.
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