Illinois enacts first US state law requiring third-party safety audits of frontier AI

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act into law on July 6, 2026, making Illinois the first US state to require independent third-party safety audits of frontier AI models.

The law, Senate Bill 315, passed with near-unanimous bipartisan support, clearing the Senate 52-5 on May 21 and the House 110-0 on May 27, and takes effect January 1, 2027. It targets the largest developers: companies with more than $500 million in annual gross revenue that train models using over 10^26 compute operations, a threshold that captures roughly a dozen firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta and xAI.

Covered developers must publish and annually update a frontier AI framework for assessing catastrophic risk, submit to regular independent audits, and report safety incidents to the state within 72 hours — or within 24 hours when there is imminent risk of death or serious injury. The governor’s office called it a nation-leading measure.

The statute defines a catastrophic risk as an incident causing more than 50 deaths or serious injuries, or over $1 billion in damage. Violations carry civil fines up to $1 million, rising to $3 million for repeat offenses, enforced exclusively by the Illinois Attorney General. The law also adds whistleblower protections for employees who report safety concerns.

The audit requirement is the sharpest break from existing state AI rules, most of which govern narrow uses such as hiring or deepfakes rather than the models themselves. What the law does not settle is who qualifies as an independent auditor or what an audit must cover — questions left to rulemaking before the 2027 effective date.