Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed artificial intelligence legislation modeled after similar bills in California and New York on Monday, furthering a push for a state-driven national framework in lieu of federal regulations. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.

"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," Pritzker said before signing the bill. "We can work together to establish thoughtful guardrails in ways that benefit both industry and the public, or we can allow a handful of actors to evade accountability and push the costs and detriment onto ordinary people. Illinois has chosen our path."

Senate Bill 315, also known as the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, increases transparency and accountability requirements for the largest artificial intelligence models — those that generate more than $500 million in annual revenue and are trained using massive computing power.

The bill mirrors California's SB-53 and New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, which were each signed in late 2025. It establishes new reporting standards for the possibility that the AI model could be used for large-scale harms, such as by providing users assistance in creating a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon or committing cyber-attacks.

Senate sponsor Sen. Mary Edly-Allen, D-Libertyville, said there is an urgency for states to protect against those potential harms.

"We are not willing to wait for Congress to act," Edly-Allen said. "There's an old saying: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Teach AI to fish, though, and it might just empty the whole river trying to figure out how."

Though the three states only account for roughly 20% of the national populus, lawmakers estimate that they represent roughly 40% of the U.S. AI market, effectively creating a de facto national standard.

The new law requires model developers to publish an AI framework outlining how the developer identifies and assesses "catastrophic risk," defined as the likelihood that incidents that could cause death or serious injury to more than 50 people or more than $1 million in property damage.

Developers will also be required to report any incidents that could cause harm to the state within 72 hours of identifying the incident, or 24 hours if it poses an imminent risk for death or serious physical injury.

The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Daniel Didech, D-Buffalo Grove, said the harms the bill will regulate are not theoretical.

"We have already seen the first AI-inspired mass shooting. We have already seen AI systems utilized to attack a municipal water and drainage utility," Didech said.

He also alluded to the example of Anthropic's Mythos model, which the company said was too powerful a cyberweapon to release to the public. Anthropic supported Illinois' bill and had representatives present at the signing on Monday.

"Every transformative technology in our history, from automobiles to electricity to air travel, has delivered enormous benefits while carrying real risks, and in every case the government responded not by banning the technology and not by taking a hands-off approach, but by building safeguards, so everyday people can trust that these technologies are safe," Didech said.

Illinois' version, similar in most ways to the standards set in New York and California, adds a first-in-the-nation requirement for mandatory annual third-party audits; New York's version only required a single independent audit at the time when developers became large enough to qualify under the law.

During debate in the General Assembly, the third-party audit provision was a point of contention for some industry stakeholders, including TechNet.