In early July, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act (SB 315). The new legislation targets the AI industry and the rapid, unprecedented growth of a technology so powerful that even its’ creators don’t know the limits to its’ capabilities.
Illinois wasn’t the first state to introduce an AI law, but it was the first to include mandatory third-party audits, employment discrimination rules, and use restrictions in healthcare. However, it has an important limitation that everyday Americans should be aware of.
Individuals do not have the right to sue over harm caused by AI under SB 315. There’s no private right of action.
What does this mean in practice? You still can’t file a lawsuit against the insurance company, employer, or hospital that uses AI to make decisions about your claim, your job, or your care.
Instead, the new AI law in Illinois is focused on regulating the companies that build the powerful software. The goal is to establish transparency, accountability, and safety surrounding the industry.
While the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act is clearly a significant step towards regulating the industry, it doesn’t provide a legal avenue for those financially or physically hurt by AI.
What Does the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act Do?
Illinois’ Governor signed SB 315 into law on July 6, 2026. He called it one of the strongest AI oversight frameworks in the country, and with good reason.
It requires the largest, wealthiest AI developers, including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI to:
- Release safety frameworks
- Undergo independent third-party audits
- Report “critical safety incidents” to the state within 72 hours (or 24 hours if the risk is imminent)
Ensuring companies meet SB 315 requirements is up to the Attorney General. It comes into effect on January 1, 2027, with many components not kicking in until 2028.
It sounds sweeping, and there’s no argument that it’s a substantial piece of legislation. But two details buried in the fine print affects, (and matters more to), the average person than any AI-audit requirement – who the law covers and who can enforce it.
You Still Can’t Sue Under SB 315
Since the Illinois AG is the only one who can enforce the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, the law doesn’t let individuals sue when an AI system hurts them.
That’s not to say filing a lawsuit is impossible; instead, people have to rely on existing laws, such as product liability, negligence, medical malpractice, employment discrimination, or bad-faith insurance actions.
It’s a considerable limitation because ordinary Americans are constantly experiencing real, documented harm caused by AI, including:
- Bad medical information. Even outside a hospital setting, people are using AI for medical advice. They use chatbots to discuss their health and symptoms. Because they sound so confident – even when they’re flat-out wrong – individuals trust AI medical advice, which is dangerous and can have long-term, catastrophic consequences.
- Health insurance denials. Families have sued UnitedHealthcare and Humana over an algorithm called nH Predict. They’ve alleged it cut off coverage for crucial rehabilitation that elderly patients needed based on statistical predictions rather than a doctor’s judgment. A similar lawsuit accused Cigna, another AI tool, of using an algorithm to deny tens of thousands of claims without individual reviews by doctors.
- Job loss. A closely watched lawsuit alleges Meta used AI to make layoff decisions, and that in doing so, the company violated existing discrimination and labor laws. Plaintiffs claim that instead of identifying workers with lower job performance, the software disproportionately selected those who had taken medical, parental, or family leave or who had disabilities. These are all factors that companies cannot discriminate against.
None of these harms, which have been widely suffered across the U.S., are covered by the incident-reporting duty outlined in Illinois’ Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act. This brings us to the second overlooked piece of the legislation that people should know about.
Illinois’ New AI Law Targets Builders, Not Companies that Use It
The language in SB 315 is clear: The law only applies to “large frontier developers”. These are companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue that train AI models using an enormous amount of computing power (over 10ˆ26 operations).
That threshold is designed to capture the handful of companies building the most powerful general-purpose AI systems in the world, including Google and Meta.
Simply put, Illinois’ Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act wasn’t designed to address the businesses making decisions about individuals; it doesn’t reach the landlord screening your rental application, insurance company deciding whether to pay your claim, or the hospital system using a diagnostic tool to determine the cause, and ultimately, the treatment of your illness.
These organizations are using AI, often licensed from one of the big developers, but SB 315 doesn’t regulate that use. The law watches and polices the company that built the engine, not the company that’s leveraging it in ways that affect real peoples’ lives.
What Illinois Laws Protect People Harmed by AI Use?
While SB 315 doesn’t give Illinois consumers the right to sue over AI harm, there are existing state laws that may still apply in certain cases:
- Insurance bad-faith law. When an insurer denies a claim based on an AI algorithm with little or no human review, it may be used as evidence of bad faith under insurance law.
- Employment discrimination law. Previous amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act address the use of AI in hiring and employment decisions. These changes came into effect on January 1, 2026.
- Traditional negligence and product liability claims. These laws still apply when a defective or poorly designed AI tool causes physical or financial injuries.
Another important factor that affects whether or not a company is held responsible for using AI in a way that caused harm comes down to the type of attorney you hire.
An experienced insurance, product liability, employment, or personal injury attorney who understands how AI was used in your specific situation is crucial. The right legal representation can be the difference between a claim that goes nowhere and a successful verdict or settlement that gets you what you’re entitled to and holds companies responsible for how they use AI.
Changes to the AI Industry are on the Way
The federal government has been widely criticized for failing to regulate AI, but that hasn’t stopped advocates, state officials, companies, and concerned citizens from making noise and pushing for real change.
In fact, several states are currently working on their own legislation aimed at regulating the industry. Thousands of AI bills and amendments to existing laws have been introduced and enacted over the last couple of years. They’ve targeted issues like deepfakes, harm to minors, transparency, and algorithmic discrimination.
Combined with Illinois becoming the third state to pass an AI law, it’s clear that change is coming, albeit slower than if federal laws existed.
