US AI Regulations
No federal AI statute yet — instead, a fast-growing patchwork of state laws, agency guidance, and sector-specific rules that a compliance program has to track state by state.
The United States has taken a fundamentally different approach than the EU: rather than one comprehensive federal AI law, AI-specific obligations are emerging state by state, layered on top of existing federal law that already applies to AI systems even without AI-specific language — anti-discrimination law, consumer protection law, and sector regulators like the FTC and EEOC issuing guidance that treats AI harms as existing legal violations, not a new category of law.
For a company operating nationally, this means the actual compliance surface is the union of every state you operate in or sell into, not just where you're headquartered. Colorado's AI Act was the first comprehensive state-level statute; several other states have active legislation at varying stages. We track the ones with real legislative movement here, not every bill introduced and abandoned in a single session.
Jurisdictions
California AI Regulations
California has moved on multiple fronts at once — automated decision-making rules, generative AI disclosure requirements, and employment-specific AI rules layered on top of the state's existing privacy regime.
Colorado AI Regulations
Colorado's first AI Act (SB 24-205) never took effect: SB 26-189 repealed and replaced it in May 2026 with a narrower automated-decision-making law whose duties start January 1, 2027.
Recently updated
US employers using AI in hiring face existing federal civil rights law plus city and state rules: NYC Local Law 144's bias audits, Illinois HB 3773's notice duty, California's automated-decision regulations, and Colorado's new automated decision-making law. This checklist maps what each requires and what to do first.
Governome Editorial Team · 4 min read
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Massachusetts AI Regulatory Guidance: What Exists Today
There's no Massachusetts AI Act to check against, and there may not be one for a while. What there is: an Attorney General's advisory applying consumer protection, anti-discrimination, and data security law directly to AI systems, a state policy governing how executive branch agencies use generative AI internally, and a frontier-AI safety bill reconciling between the House and Senate. Here's what's actually binding today, what isn't, and what to watch.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
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Washington State AI Regulations: Current Status
There's no single 'Washington AI law' to check compliance against. The My Health My Data Act, a 2020 government facial-recognition statute, and two new 2026 laws on companion chatbots and AI content provenance each reach AI products through a different trigger. A fifth, on AI in health-insurance prior authorization, is already in force. Here's what each one actually requires.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
SB 2, the duty-of-care bill compliance teams have tracked since 2024, failed twice and was shelved. What's actually in force is SB 5 (Public Act 26-15), a four-track statute with obligations phasing in from October 2026 through January 2028. Here's what each track requires and when.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
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New York AI Regulations Beyond NYC Local Law 144
NYC Local Law 144 only reaches automated hiring and promotion tools used inside New York City. Separately, New York State has enacted the RAISE Act, the AI Companion Models Law, the Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act, and NYDFS Circular Letter No. 7 — four instruments covering frontier AI safety, companion chatbots, personalized pricing, and insurance underwriting. Here's what each one actually requires.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
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Utah AI Policy Act: A Practical Breakdown
Utah regulates AI through disclosure, not a duty of care. SB 149 set the baseline in 2024; SB 226 narrowed and added a safe harbor in 2025; a separate law, HB 452, covers mental health chatbots on its own terms. Here's what each actually requires.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
BIPA (2008) regulates biometric data regardless of AI, and HB 3773 (2024) regulates AI in employment decisions regardless of biometrics. Here's what each actually requires, where HB 3773's implementing rules currently stand, and the one place the two statutes overlap.
Governome Editorial Team · 7 min read
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Texas AI Regulations (TRAIGA): What's Actually Required
TRAIGA (HB 149) took effect January 1, 2026, with a prohibited-practices list and an intent-based liability standard that's deliberately harder to trigger than the reasonable-care duty in Colorado's original AI Act. Here's who it covers, what it bans, and how enforcement actually works.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
There's no single federal AI procurement law. OMB Memorandum M-25-22 governs most federal AI contracts today, a separate executive order adds ideological-neutrality terms for LLM vendors specifically, and a GSA contract clause meant to tie it together is still only a draft.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
Teams look for 'the AI regulator' and don't find one, then assume nothing applies. Jurisdiction follows the underlying function — hiring, lending, marketing claims, investment advice, medical use, calling — and a single product can trigger more than one agency at once.
Governome Editorial Team · 7 min read
An executive order can't preempt state law by itself. Real preemption needs an act of Congress, a court ruling, or funding leverage coercive enough to force repeal — and the federal government's most advanced attempt at any of the three just got mooted by the state rewriting the law it was suing over.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
Congress has introduced nearly 400 AI bills and passed none. The reason isn't simple gridlock — it's fragmented committee jurisdiction, a task force that recommended against one big law, and an unresolved fight over federal preemption that's now spilled into the courts.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
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A History of US Federal AI Executive Orders
US federal AI policy has never come from a statute. It's come from a sequence of executive orders running from 2019 to 2025 — American AI leadership, then trustworthy government use, then a comprehensive safety order, then that order's rescission and replacement. Here's the full timeline, what each order actually required, and why none of it can outlast a change in administration the way a law would.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
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FCC Rules on AI-Generated Robocalls and Voice Cloning
The FCC's February 2024 declaratory ruling confirmed that an AI-generated voice counts as an 'artificial voice' under the TCPA, closing an argument a political operative tried to use against a wave of AI-cloned robocalls. A separate rule requiring calls to disclose AI use is still pending, not in force.
Governome Editorial Team · 7 min read
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FDA's Regulatory Pathway for AI/ML-Based Medical Devices
AI-enabled medical software doesn't get its own FDA lane. It goes through the same device pathways as a stethoscope or an infusion pump, with one addition built for software that keeps learning after it ships — and a real threshold question of whether it's regulated as a device at all.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
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SEC AI-Washing Enforcement: What Counts as a Violation
Four SEC cases so far — two investment advisers, a trading-fraud scheme, and a public company's SEC filings — show the agency doesn't need new legislation to charge AI-washing. It just applies the antifraud and disclosure rules that already existed to a specific, checkable capability claim that turned out to be false.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
A machine-learning underwriting model that can't explain why it declined an application isn't a legal gray area. ECOA has required a specific, accurate reason since 1974, and the CFPB spent 2022 and 2023 explaining exactly how that applies to AI — before withdrawing the explanation, not the rule, in 2025.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
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EEOC Guidance on AI in Employment Decisions, Explained
The EEOC's AI hiring guidance no longer exists on eeoc.gov. That doesn't mean algorithmic hiring discrimination became legal — it means the agency's own explanation of the law disappeared while the law itself stayed exactly as it was. Here's what the withdrawn guidance said, and what actually still applies.
Governome Editorial Team · 8 min read
There's no federal AI enforcement statute, yet the FTC has extracted settlements — including forced deletion of the AI models themselves — from companies making AI claims. Here's the legal theory behind 'algorithmic deception,' the real case record, and what actually crosses the line.
Governome Editorial Team · 9 min read
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US Federal AI Regulation: What Actually Exists Today
There's no single federal AI law in the US. Here's what federal agencies have actually said about AI, and why existing law already covers more AI use cases than most companies assume.
Governome Editorial Team · 5 min read
Frequently asked questions
- Is there a federal AI law in the US?
- Not a comprehensive one. Federal agencies — the FTC, EEOC, CFPB, and others — have issued guidance applying existing law to AI systems, and sector-specific rules (in areas like credit and employment) already cover a meaningful share of AI use cases. But there's no single federal AI statute comparable to the EU AI Act.
- Which US state has the most developed AI law?
- Colorado is the reference point: its first AI Act (SB 24-205) was repealed and replaced in May 2026 by SB 26-189, a narrower automated-decision-making law with duties starting January 1, 2027. Other states have active legislation at earlier stages — see the state pages here for current status.
- If my company only operates in one state, do other states' AI laws matter?
- They can, if you sell into or serve customers in those states — most of these statutes are triggered by where the affected consumer is, not where your company is based. A company based in a state with no AI-specific law can still owe obligations under another state's statute for the customers it serves there.