Methodology: How AI Laws by State Finds, Checks & Counts AI Laws

Bottom line Every bill and law on this site is published from a record checked against official sources: the legislature's bill page and text, or Congress.gov for federal bills. Nothing is published automatically, and the site does not use AI to write its pages. Enacted laws are counted with the rule below and compared with a state-by-state review of every legislature. You can report a mistake on the corrections page.

What counts as an AI law

We count a law when its enacted text has a substantive provision about artificial intelligence or a closely related technology. A substantive provision is an obligation, prohibition, right, crime, disclosure rule or admissibility standard, or a government body created with duties. The technologies are:

AI, machine learning and large language models;
generative or synthetic media, including deepfakes and digital replicas;
automated decision systems, including recommendation algorithms and personalized feeds;
facial recognition;
self-driving vehicles and robots, including delivery robots.

A law is not counted when it only defines AI as a term, lists AI as a category, funds it in a budget line or asks for a study, or when its only AI link is the profiling opt-out found in general consumer privacy laws. Laws that deny legal personhood to AI are counted, including those that do it by excluding AI from the definition of a person. When a long law has one qualifying section, its page describes that section.

Each bill is counted once, by its bill number, however many versions it went through. "Enacted" means signed into law or otherwise enacted. Enactment dates are checked in our state-by-state reviews, which cover laws enacted since 2019; where a review has no date, we use the date of the bill's last recorded action. Effective dates are the ones stated in each law, and a court order or a later law can change them. The embeds and data files follow these rules.

1. How a bill gets on the site

Finding billsEvery day except Sunday, our software searches two bill-tracking services for AI-related bills: Open States, which republishes the records of state legislatures, and Congress.gov for federal bills. What it finds is saved as a draft. Drafts are not shown on the site.

Checking against the official recordBefore a bill is published, we open its official record (the legislature's bill page and text, or Congress.gov and govinfo.gov for federal bills) and confirm its number, session, status, dates and what it does. Bills that turn out not to be about AI are left off.

Writing the pageThe summary, key provisions and business impact are written from the bill text, and the record keeps the official sources it was checked against. Each change is reviewed before it goes live.

Keeping statuses currentFor bills still moving through a legislature, the status and latest action are refreshed automatically from Open States and Congress.gov. These services can lag the legislature by days, so every bill page links to its official record for the latest action.

2. Making sure no enacted law is missing

For every state, D.C. and Congress we keep a reviewed list of each enacted AI law since 2019, built from the legislature's own records and checked against outside trackers such as NCSL's. Our software compares the site with these lists every night and flags any law that is missing. Once a month we re-check legislatures for newly enacted laws and add them after checking each one on the official record.

The enactment dates in our embeds and data files come from these reviews. Where a review has no date for a law, we use the date of the bill's last recorded action, and the data files say which source each date came from.

3. What the labels mean

Enacted: signed into law, or became law another way (for example without a signature, or over a veto).
Effective date: the date stated in the law. On a law page, a passed effective date means only that the date has passed. Our labels do not track court orders, so a law that a court has blocked can still show its effective date as passed. Where we know of a court order, the law's summary says so.
Set to take effect: the stated effective date is still ahead. A court order or a later law can change it, and some laws take effect in stages.
Pending statuses (introduced, in committee, passed one chamber) come from the bill-tracking services described above and can be a few days behind the legislature.

4. Standards for summaries and guides

These are the rules we write to:

Official sources. Summaries are written from the bill text and the legislature's record. Guides and blog posts link to the sources of their facts.
No invented details. Dates, dollar amounts, penalties and names must come from the source. When a source does not say something, we leave it out rather than guess.
Date changes. When a later law moves an effective date (for example, AB 853 moved California SB 942's effective date to August 2, 2026), the law's record is updated and the change is recorded with its source.
Byline. Content is published under the "AI Laws by State" byline. Individual contributor names are not used.

5. How AI is and is not used

The site does not use AI models to write or publish anything. Until October 2026, an automated system drafted bill summaries with AI models and published the ones that passed an internal score. We turned it off, and every page it wrote has since been rewritten from official sources.

We do use AI research tools to help find bills, read official texts and draft summaries and guides. However a draft is made, every bill record is checked against the official sources listed with it before it is published.

6. What we do not claim

We are not a law firm and we do not provide legal advice. Our content is informational. Compliance decisions require a licensed attorney.
We are not real-time. A new bill appears only after it has been checked, and pending statuses can lag the legislature.
Our summaries are not exhaustive. They cover a law's AI provisions and what matters most for compliance, not every clause.
We can make mistakes. That is what the corrections process is for.

7. Corrections

If you find an error on this site, such as a wrong date, a misstated penalty, a stale status or a missing law, please tell us. Every submission is saved and sent to us, and we check it against the official record. If the record supports it, we fix the page.

Found something wrong?

It only takes a minute. Include a link to the official source if you have one, and leave your email if you would like a reply.

Submit a correction

8. How often things update

Search for new AI bills: every day except Sunday.
Status of pending bills: refreshed automatically each day, in batches.
New and corrected pages: published as soon as they have been checked.
Check for missing enacted laws: automated comparison every night, and a review of legislatures every month.
Guides and blog posts: each shows the date it was last updated.

Contact us

For corrections, please use the corrections form. For press inquiries, partnerships, or questions about our methodology, email read@ailawsbystate.com.

Last updated October 13, 2026. This page is maintained by AI Laws by State and is updated whenever our process changes.

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