Artificial Intelligence (AI) Legislation

Lawmakers are increasingly addressing AI through legislation

As AI technologies have burst on the scene, state lawmakers have responded by addressing concerns with this ubiquitous technology through public policy. In 2023, we saw less than 200 bills introduced across state legislatures addressing the issue of AI. But that shifted in 2024 when MultiState tracked over 600 AI-related bills with nearly 100 enacted into law. That number reached 1,200 bills introduced across all 50 states in 2025.

Most states run on two year legislative sessions from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years (the exceptions are New Jersey and Virginia, which both begin a new two year session in 2026 and Texas, Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota, which only hold one legislative session every two years in the odd-numbered year). Of the 44 states that begin the second year of a two-year session in 2026, 23 of those states allow bills to carry over from the previous year to the new year. Meanwhile, in the 21 non-carry over states, the bills that did not make it past the finish line by the end of 2025 are now dead and will need to be reintroduced in 2026.

Keep an eye on the bills we’re tracking with the state-by-state bill tracking map below. For a comprehensive view of current state laws related to AI, see our state-by-state AI policy overviews.

A note on methodology: MultiState tracks hundreds of thousands of bills throughout the legislative process for hundreds of clients on a vast variety of topics. Each client has a different perspective on why they care about certain bills, and we customize our tracking and analysis for each client. Our tracking of “AI-related” bills below is an amalgamation of many different perspectives on “artificial intelligence” organized internally into dozens of AI subtopics. For this purpose, “AI-related” is defined broadly, and includes legislation relating to generative AI, forming task forces and committees to study AI policy, “right to compute” and AI regulatory sandboxes, budget items to incentivize AI-related investment in a state or boost education on using AI, as well as legislation related to other “AI” related technologies such as autonomous vehicles and facial recognition systems. The growing number of bills introduced on the topic of AI is an indication of the high level of interest from policymakers in this emerging technology, but note that less than 15% of bills introduced by state lawmakers actually become law on average.