Artificial intelligence companies will have to submit to third-party audits in Illinois and develop safety plans to avert potentially catastrophic effects of the burgeoning technology under AI regulations enacted Monday by Gov. JB Pritzker that mark the most stringent in the nation.
The state’s new guardrails around AI megadevelopers such as OpenAI and Anthropic mirror similar ones instituted in New York and California but take a step further by requiring annual independent audits — all filling a void of regulation at the federal level, according to Pritzker.
“When managed properly, [AI] can foster tremendous growth, productivity, and innovation across the economy and vastly improve our quality of life,” the governor said during a press conference at his West Loop office. “But with that transformative potential comes catastrophic risk, much of which isn’t fully understood yet.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a glaring but not unsurprising lack of leadership and foresight from our own federal government and a mindless rush to riches among private-sector tech leaders,” said Pritzker, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump.
Illinois’ Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, which sailed through the General Assembly with bipartisan support in May, requires “large frontier developers” — those generating at least $500 million in yearly revenue — to create, publish and adhere to safety plans to stave off dangerous uses of their rapidly advancing platforms.
The companies are required to lay out how they’ll mitigate “catastrophic risk” resulting from AI, including anything that could “materially contribute to the death of, or serious injury to, more than 50 people,” by supplying “expert-level assistance in the creation or release of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon,” the law says.
Any “critical safety incidents” have to be reported to the state within 72 hours, or a day if it “poses an imminent risk of death or serious physical injury,” according to the legislation, which includes whistleblower protections for workers.
Companies that don’t comply face civil penalties of $1 million for their first violation and $3 million after that.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul acknowledged “one could argue $3 million is perhaps not enough” of a deterrent for companies approaching trillion-dollar valuations.
“But this is the beginning step,” Raoul said, adding “that there are other powers that we have, including our Consumer Protection and Deceptive Practices Act that can add to our enforcement ability.”
The legislation was supported by Anthropic, the AI lab valued at $965 billion earlier this year on the strength of its Claude assistant. A spokesman called Illinois’ law “an important step toward the accountability this technology demands.”
Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, said “there’s more work to be done” on AI regulation, but the state’s new framework “puts Illinois at the forefront of smart AI regulation by creating an environment where technological advancement is paired with real transparency and accountability.”
“These decisions are too consequential to be left to a federal government that can’t even meet people’s basic needs, or the tech bros, whose culture of ‘move fast and break things’ is moving faster and faster and breaking more and more as it goes,” Welch said.
When Illinois’ law takes effect Jan. 1, about 40% of the American market, along with New York and California, will be covered by “what will effectively become a national standard for AI safety,” according to state Sen. Mary Edly-Allen, D-Grayslake, a chief sponsor.
“We’re talking about biological threats,” Edly-Allen said. “We’re talking about misinformation campaigns, fraud, election interference, cyber threats, and systems that operate beyond meaningful human oversight… If we got social media wrong — and we did — we cannot afford to get AI wrong at an even greater scale.”