Trahan releases CLAIM Act draft on AI developer liability

U.S. Representative Lori Trahan on October 7 released the CLAIM Act as a discussion draft, proposing a federal route for non-users to seek damages and other relief from AI developers when their systems cause certain injuries.

The proposal is not enacted law, and the released text still contains placeholders for a bill number and committee assignment. If introduced and enacted, it would assign potential liability to the person that performed an AI system’s initial training, while leaving existing state and local claims available.

Under the six-page draft, a developer would be liable regardless of the degree of care it exercised when an AI system factually and proximately causes a reasonably foreseeable injury to a non-user through conduct that would amount to negligence, an intentional tort or a crime if performed by an adult human of sound mind. Defamation claims are excluded from that rule.

That liability would apply only when neither the system’s user nor an intermediary that fine-tuned, scaffolded or otherwise modified it intended the conduct or was negligent about the risk. The proposal would cover systems whose training, development, provision or deployment is in or affects interstate or foreign commerce.

State law where the injury occurred would determine whether the conduct met the elements of negligence, an intentional tort or a crime. When a claim requires a particular mental state, the draft would create a rebuttable presumption that the AI system had it if a fact finder concluded, by a preponderance of the evidence, that a natural person taking similar actions in similar circumstances would have had that state of mind. The text says an AI system’s inability to possess mental states would not be a defense.

A qualifying non-user could bring the proposed action in federal district court or state court without satisfying a federal amount-in-controversy or citizenship threshold. The filing deadline would be three years after the plaintiff discovered, or with reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury.

The federal remedy would supplement rather than displace other federal and state remedies. The draft expressly says it would not preempt or limit state or local causes of action, remedies, liability standards or protections. Its provisions would apply to conduct and injuries occurring on or after enactment and would cease to have effect five years after enactment.

Trahan invited feedback from experts, industry, advocates and the public. The materials released by her office do not include an assigned House bill number, committee referral, cosponsor list, hearing schedule or date for formal introduction.