The Illinois House of Representatives passed a landmark bill Wednesday that would set a new standard for regulating America’s leading AI companies if Gov. JB Pritzker signs it.
The bill, SB 315, mirrors existing provisions in legislation in California and New York requiring frontier AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to create, publish and annually update plans to address severe or catastrophic risks from their AI models.
It would also mandate annual independent third-party audits of such AI companies on safety issues, which would be a first for any AI legislation in the U.S.
“Artificial intelligence technology is among the most significant innovations, in my opinion, in the history of humanity,” said Democratic Rep. Daniel Didech, the sponsor of the bill in the Illinois House. Democratic Sen. Mary Edly-Allen sponsored the bill in the Illinois Senate.
“It’ll make people healthier, it’ll improve quality of life, it’ll increase productivity. But the flip side of that is these tools are so powerful that there’s also some potential risk,” Didech told NBC News several minutes before the bill came to a vote Wednesday afternoon.
“This piece of legislation is designed to put up some guardrails and make sure we have some safeguards in place to protect against some of the worst catastrophic risks,” he said.
The bill passed the House 110-0. The Senate passed it 52-5 on Thursday. The Legislature now has 30 days to send it to Pritzker, who indicated he would sign it.
“Illinois is leading the nation in holding Big Tech accountable,” Pritzker wrote on X shortly after the House passed the bill. “I look forward to signing SB 315 and working with the legislature so that AI, when used, is used responsibly.”
Beyond requiring independent third-party audits and public safety plans, SB 315 would create whistleblower protections and reporting processes for the AI companies’ employees.
OpenAI and Anthropic, two of America’s largest AI companies, have publicly supported the bill, while a trade organization representing other AI companies has opposed it. Google, xAI and Meta did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
In a statement, OpenAI spokesperson Jamie Radice said: “The Illinois General Assembly has shown real bipartisan leadership in advancing SB 315 and developing a thoughtful framework for frontier AI safety. As AI systems become more capable, clear expectations around safety, transparency, incident reporting, and accountability matter.”
Celebrating the bill’s passage, Anthropic’s head of state and local government relations, Cesar Fernandez, said: “With strong bipartisan support, Illinois is on track to become the first state to require independent, third-party audits of large frontier AI developers’ safety practices.”
“SB 315 takes the safety practices leading labs already follow voluntarily — publishing a safety framework, transparent reporting, protecting whistleblowers — and helps establish a baseline that every leading AI developer is expected to meet,” Fernandez said.
Many AI policy experts, legislators and civil society groups from across the country have advocated for federal AI legislation in recent years, as AI systems have become more powerful and prevalent. However, Congress has yet to make meaningful progress on national rules, with members clashing over which risks to address and how to address them.
“The states shouldn’t be doing this,” Didech told NBC News. “The best way to regulate these types of catastrophic risks would be a federal approach.”
“The reality is that Congress has not taken up this issue yet, and the technology is developing at such a rapid pace that states have had no choice but to step in,” he said.
The White House has strongly opposed provisions similar to those in SB 315, arguing that such regulation could hamstring America’s AI industry and require companies to comply with a burdensome jumble of state regulations.
The bill passed days after President Donald Trump decided at the last minute not to sign a planned executive order that would have established a voluntary safety testing framework for America’s leading AI companies. According to two people familiar with the issue, the draft order would have allowed government agencies to vet advanced AI models for safety issues before their public releases.
The bill stipulates that companies would be liable for civil penalties if they violated the new law. The bill, if it is signed, would take effect Jan. 1.
