Since nobody is exactly holding their breath for a big AI safety push in Congress these days, observers agree that the path to AI regulation in the US runs through the states. That path looked perilously close to being blocked in early July, until the Senate overwhelmingly voted down a federal budget bill moratorium that would have blocked state and local AI rules for a decade.
With that proposed ban dead—for now—experts say a surge of state-level laws may be on the way. That’s in spite of some vague threats against enforcing such regulations in Trump’s AI Action Plan. The focus of state legislation has so far ranged from targeted rules around pressing use cases like deepfakes and AI in healthcare or hiring, to comprehensive bills that cover high-risk AI models.
All-encompassing: Hope Anderson, a partner in White & Case’s data, privacy, and cybersecurity practice, compared the push to state-level efforts to legislate digital privacy in lieu of congressional action. AI-focused legislation touches on a wider range of areas, however, which is already leading to more variety in emerging state laws, she said.
“States are accelerating their efforts to regulate AI, and I expect that trend to continue, likely outpacing what we saw with privacy,” Anderson told Tech Brew in an email. “Unlike privacy laws, which tend to follow a more uniform structure, AI touches such a wide array of sectors that, in addition to comprehensive AI laws, we’re already seeing legislation emerge on everything from automated decision-making to deepfakes and healthcare. The breadth of use cases likely means we’re going to see a surge in diverse, state-specific laws.”
Working together: Forrester principal analyst Alla Valente said to expect states to begin “fast-tracking stalled bills or by taking up new ones” in the wake of the moratorium’s failure.
Some experts have worried that piecemeal regulation will lead to a maze of different rules for companies to navigate state by state—it was part of the justification for the proposed moratorium in the first place. Valente said this situation might be avoided if states take cues from one another’s landmark laws.
“To avoid a federal patchwork of AI laws, we could see interstate coordination where bills such as the New York RAISE Act or existing laws in California or Colorado become the template for other states,” she said.
States to watch: Last fall, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed what would have been a milestone AI safety law in California amid tech industry backlash. That bill’s author, State Senator Scott Wiener, is back with a narrower bill that focuses on whistleblower rights for AI employees flagging dangers, and advancing a public cloud computing cluster. In an emailed statement to Tech Brew, Wiener criticized Trump’s AI Action Plan for “bullying states into not regulating AI.”
New York is on the verge of enacting a safety bill called the RAISE Act, which would be the first law to impose legal safety standards on frontier AI models. The bill focuses specifically on catastrophic scenarios involving mass casualties or billion-dollar damages. It requires developers of models that cost more than $100 million to publish certain safety protocols and contingency plans as well as annual reviews. The bill has passed the state legislature and is awaiting Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature.