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The push for a big AI legislation package may have petered out a bit on Capitol Hill, but that hasn’t stopped statehouses across the country from rolling out a stream of new regulations.
Lawmakers in 45 states introduced 446 bills tackling different aspects of AI’s use in the first half of 2024 and enacted 69 of them, according to a report from public affairs software company Quorum. Those proposals encompass everything from protecting against deepfakes and algorithm discrimination to data privacy and ensuring state governments themselves are using the tech fairly.
While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his colleagues in the so-called “AI gang” have released a roadmap toward AI policy, Ben Buchanan, the White House’s special advisor for AI, told us recently he doesn’t expect much progress on it during an election year. That’s left a gap for states to fill as generative AI tech continues to evolve at a breakneck pace.
State by state: New York and California have led the way with 38 and 36 bills mentioning AI introduced this year, respectively, the report said. California’s recently proposed AI safety bill has led to a high-profile showdown in the tech industry, while New York has sought to tackle a range of AI-related issues from hiring system bias and shaping state agency use of AI to a law protecting entertainers from AI clones.
One popular area for state regulation is restricting the use of deepfakes in elections, which is the subject of laws or bills either on the books or proposed in half of US states, according to Public Citizen’s tracker.
Arkansas is the only state where lawmakers met and didn’t introduce any AI bills, while Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas have legislatures that don’t meet during even-numbered years, according to the report.
The problem? The absence of comprehensive federal legislation is already leading to a patchwork of state laws with different rules and definitions that makes it more difficult for businesses operating across state lines. While federal guidelines like President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI do provide some standardized definitions that lawmakers in California have borrowed from, businesses are already reporting trouble navigating the disparate regulations.