Pritzker signs new Illinois law creating accountability for artificial intelligence developers
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday signed legislation aimed at holding artificial intelligence companies accountable.
Senate Bill 315 passed nearly unanimously in the Illinois state Senate and House of Representatives in May. The bill was modeled after 2025 laws in New York and California, in an effort to further a national standard lawmakers say is lacking at the federal level.
"AI is the single most significant technological innovation and development of the modern age," Pritzker said Monday. "When managed properly, it can foster tremendous growth, productivity, and innovation across the economy and vastly improve our quality of life. But with that transformative potential comes catastrophic risk, much of which isn't fully understood yet."
The legislation also did something increasingly rare in politics: bring both sides of the aisle together. Both sides seem to agree the federal government was woefully late to regulate social media in its early days, and that the same mistakes should not be repeated with AI.
"You see, if we got social media wrong, and we did, we cannot afford to get AI wrong at an even greater scale," said State Sen. Mary Edly-Allen (D-Grayslake).
"We can all acknowledge that it is poised to be the most consequential technology of our time," said Illinois House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch (D-Chicago).
Pritzker agreed a lack of federal oversight and the avarice of tech leaders are leading to a serious problem when it comes to AI.
"Unfortunately, we've seen a glaring, but not surprising lack of leadership and foresight from our own federal government, and a mindless rush to riches among private-sector tech leaders," he said. "That has fueled a race to the bottom, marked by a lack of protection of private and personal information, the potential for harmful model behavior, and unintended algorithm jailbreaks. Those are serious threats to the public interest and to the future."
"Congress and the President ought to be passing similar legislation, but they've so far been unwilling, because many are captive to special interests that profit from the industry having no regulation," he said.
The bill requires developers to create and publish a transparency framework explaining how the company applies industry standards, measures model capabilities and the chance of catastrophic risk, and identifies and responds to safety incidents.
Developers will also now be required to employ third-party auditors to ensure compliance with the framework, a provision that is still a point of contention for some industry stakeholders, including TechNet, a coalition of tech executives across the industry.
The law also requires AI companies to report issues that could lead to harm or death within 24 hour, explain the risks emerging in the AI space and outline measures to limit the risks. It offer protection for whistleblowers and establishes fines of up to $3 million per infraction.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the $3 million fines are just the first step.
"One could argue 3 million is not enough, but this is a beginning step," he said.
If Illinois gets this right, the hope s it knocks down things like biological threats, election interference, cyberthreats and other similar threats.
SB315 is targeted toward the most capable models developed by the largest companies through its thresholds — $500 million in revenue and a massive computing measurement. OpenAI and Anthropic both supported the bill throughout its process, and it passed the state House 110-0.
Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report. Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
