Illinois Passes Landmark AI Accountability Bill Requiring Third-Party Audits

JB Pritzker is poised to sign Senate Bill 315 into law after the Illinois General Assembly passed the landmark AI accountability measure with overwhelming bipartisan support on Wednesday. The House approved the bill 110-0 following a 52-5 Senate vote, making Illinois the first state to mandate independent third-party audits of safety practices for frontier AI developers. The legislation targets companies with annual revenues exceeding $500 million and significant computing power, requiring them to publish transparency frameworks covering safety incidents and catastrophic risks, report critical safety incidents to the state within 72 hours, and maintain anonymous internal whistleblower reporting processes. The Illinois attorney general holds exclusive enforcement authority, with civil penalties up to $3 million per violation, and private citizens are barred from filing lawsuits. The bill, modeled after 2025 laws in New York and California, takes effect January 1, 2028. OpenAI and Anthropic supported the measure throughout the legislative process, while the tech coalition TechNet opposed the third-party audit requirement, citing the lack of national standards. The legislation aims to fill a regulatory void left after the Trump administration rescinded previous federal AI safety directives. Illinois is also considering additional AI-related bills, including bans on AI-driven rent-fixing and the use of bots for ticket purchasing.