The legislation is based on similar bills from California and New York. Lawmakers estimate that the three states account for roughly 40% of the U.S. AI market, thus effectively establishing a de facto national standard in lieu of federal regulations.

Republican Darren Bailey’s campaign for governor is embracing images made with artificial intelligence in social media posts. Gov. JB Pritzker’s campaign manager said the governor’s campaign has a policy against using AI in public-facing content.

July 1 marks a second New Year’s Day in Illinois as a new budget takes effect along with more than a dozen new state laws.

Data centers are a hot topic in Illinois and around the country. Alongside more construction comes more public scrutiny.

State Republican leaders criticized the General Assembly session schedule and new taxes in this year’s budget. But they saw progress in their overall inclusion in budget talks, and also advanced several pieces of bipartisan legislation.

It was well past 4 a.m. Monday when the Illinois House of Representatives adjourned for the summer. The budget had been balanced, and a flurry of bills were sent to the governor’s desk. But a busy finish to the spring session left some of the biggest decisions until the very end.

According to a report earlier this year from the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that advocates for and researches abortion access, nearly a quarter of all people seeking an abortion outside the state where they live came to Illinois.

The bill is part of a larger package regulating AI and is modeled after legislation in California and New York as states seek to establish a national regulatory standard.

The eight bills tackle consumer protections, chatbot transparency and how AI can be used in schools. Lawmakers said the lack of federal policy was part of their motivation for introducing legislation, by banding together with other states to create a standard.

President Donald Trump directed the Commerce Department to explore whether the broadband funding could be withheld from states with artificial intelligence regulations that did not align with national policy.

The companies flooded the state’s Democratic primaries with millions of dollars to promote candidates they believed would have a light touch when it came to regulating technologies that have begun to upend how people do their jobs and manage their finances.

Gov. JB Pritzker has also proposed a two-year pause on state financial incentives for data centers that have been in place since 2019.

Illinois state legislators are proposing the Power Act, which would put guardrails around the rapid expansion of large-scale data centers.

The Citizens Utility Board is sounding the alarm on data centers’ growing demand on the electrical grid, saying Illinois consumers can expect higher electric bills.

In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released Tuesday.

Illinois lawmakers responded to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrant communities with new legal protections for students and guidelines for schools that will take effect Jan. 1. Lawmakers also focused on the use of AI in education.