While all eyes were on Connecticut to pass a comprehensive AI bill, Colorado lawmakers sent a similar AI bill through both chambers of the legislature on the last day of session, sending what could be a landmark AI law to the governor's desk. Meanwhile, the Connecticut bill fizzled out in the House due to a gubernatorial veto threat. Now, if Governor Polis (D) signs Colorado’s bill into law, it would be the broadest effort yet to impose obligations on AI developers to protect consumers with one important caveat: these provisions won’t go into effect until 2026.

Events have unfolded quickly in Connecticut, where lawmakers have tweaked a potential landmark AI bill in response to stakeholder concerns. The unlikely state has become the key battleground for AI policy in the United States. With just weeks to go before the May 8 adjournment date, the bill cleared the Senate on Wednesday but still faces an uncertain future in the House as long as Governor Ned Lamont (D) is not fully on board.

Events have unfolded quickly in Connecticut, where lawmakers have tweaked a potential landmark AI bill in response to stakeholder concerns. The unlikely state has become the key battleground for AI policy in the United States. With just weeks to go before the May 8 adjournment date, the bill cleared the Senate on Wednesday but still faces an uncertain future in the House as long as Governor Ned Lamont (D) is not fully on board.

Congressional inaction on artificial intelligence has left a vacuum for states to fill. State lawmakers have been reluctant to regulate the nascent industry enough to stifle innovation but have also expressed a desire to act quickly and offer broad guardrails to keep the technology from causing harm to consumers. A few states have proposed landmark comprehensive AI legislation that could provide an early template for others to follow. With sessions winding down in many states, some of those bills are slowly traveling down the legislative process, already with many changes as industry provides feedback.

It’s been five months since we originally dove into the topic of political deepfakes. Since then, seven additional states have enacted laws to limit the use of deepfake media in electoral campaigns, making a total of eleven states so far. With only seven short months until this year’s major elections, lawmaker’s interest in this topic has only increased.

This session, beyond their focus on combating deepfakes or comprehensively regulating the development of AI models, state lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills aimed specifically at AI use in particular industries. Last week we discussed how lawmakers are looking to protect certain industries from AI competition (e.g., music, movies, fashion), but this week we’ll examine legislation aimed at protecting the customers of specific industries — such as insurance, health care, legal, and housing — from AI use.

Deepfakes have been an easy target of state lawmakers throughout the past year. At first, these bills focused on deepfake uses in political campaigns or nonconsensual sexual exploitation. But we’ve reached the stage in the narrowly focused phase of AI regulation that lawmakers are expanding to new areas where deepfakes may wreak havoc on society. The latest is Tennessee’s ELVIS Act.

After months of work by a legislative work group, Connecticut lawmakers proposed a landmark comprehensive AI bill last month that could set a template for other states to follow. Not surprisingly, lawmakers have already amended the original bill to address numerous concerns raised after weeks of testimony from stakeholders. The proposal reflects one of the first major attempts to set broad guardrails for the emerging AI industry.

Utah enacted a package of AI bills into law this week. While not revolutionary, Utah’s legislative package represents a middle ground that most state policymakers are taking on AI regulation. These bills do not establish a comprehensive framework for the development and deployment of AI (they’ll let California and Connecticut take the lead on that), but the Utah bills address pressing issues (deepfakes and consumer protections) and align current laws with the new realities that AI tools represent, with particular emphasis on protecting vulnerable populations and mandating transparency.

So far, much of the state-level focus of AI regulation has targeted the outputs the systems produce — how AI models impact individuals. Far less attention has been given to the inputs fed into the systems — the terabytes of data developers use to train AI models. But the California Legislature is currently considering a bill that would do just that.

This week, lawmakers in Connecticut released the text of their much-anticipated AI bill (CT SB 2), which provides a comprehensive framework aimed at the development and deployment of AI models, while providing a longer timeline of enforcement with rolling effective dates and safe harbor provisions. It also compiles many of the narrower focused legislation we’ve seen enacted in a handful of other states, addressing issues like deepfakes and government use.

A sexual deepfake bill was signed into law in South Dakota, and additional deepfake bills passed the full legislature in New Mexico and made it through their chambers of origin in South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin. Plus, we saw new AI executive orders in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. But this week we’re going to focus our analysis on an important bill recently introduced in California, which might be the most comprehensive piece of state AI legislation to date.

“Impact assessments” have been a key reporting requirement of many comprehensive AI bills that lawmakers have introduced this year. They are one of the safeguards being put in place to help combat disparate treatment and discriminatory outcomes from the use of AI tools in hiring, education, and other settings. Like mandatory disclosures, impact assessments are another early tool policymakers are using to regulate AI as the technology becomes an increasingly common aspect of our daily lives.

Much of our AI coverage has focused on potential regulation of the new technology, but policymakers are also seeking to harness the power of AI to improve the lives of their residents. No state wants to be left behind in what could be a revolutionary change to workforce, education, and government. Accordingly, governors and lawmakers have proposed ways to attract AI business and ready their state’s workforce for a new AI world.

States have largely focused on regulating specific instances of AI use (e.g., sexual or political deepfakes) and largely held off on a more comprehensive regulatory action last year. The closest we’ve seen is the draft automated decision-making regulations in California that were sent back to the drawing board. But after studying the issue closely, lawmakers are prepared to expand the legislative debate in 2024 and take aim at AI more broadly, taking inspiration from President Biden’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.

Policymakers face a tough challenge when it comes to regulating the fast-moving AI industry. However, disclosure requirements are one tool policymakers have embraced. By mandating that you must disclose when you’ve used AI to generate media or an AI tool, policymakers thread the needle of providing useful information to consumers while not placing a substantial roadblock in front of the nascent industry’s development. Recent reports of low-quality, AI-generated books and articles flooding the market highlight the importance of disclosures.

The flip side of AI technology’s economy-boosting potential is the assumption that if AI succeeds as currently imagined, it’ll replace much of today’s workforce. Unsurprisingly, this is a major concern for state lawmakers and their constituents. Policymakers are again placed in the difficult position of balancing protections for individual workforces against the economic productivity gains promised by AI. So far, state lawmakers have proposed several strategies to address this issue.

The arrival of generative AI tools last year brought incredible possibilities but it also raised concerns about the potential impact of the new technology. The public and experts think regulations will be necessary. And policymakers have vowed to take quick regulatory action to ensure they will not fall behind the rapidly accelerating technology as they did with data privacy regulation. What can we expect from state AI policy in 2024?

Despite all the promise and benefits of AI technology, we’re already seeing some of the real-world, negative impacts as AI is used to produce nonconsensual, sexual deepfake images and videos showing real individuals depicted in a sexually explicit manner. These images often contain the face of an actual person on a naked or partially clothed body that is not their own and disproportionately targets women. Along with deepfakes aimed at electoral candidates, states are moving quickly to combat the alarming proliferation of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes.