# Illinois becomes first US state to mandate annual third-party AI safety audits for model developers

> Illinois has become the first US state to require annual, independent third-party safety audits of large AI models, after Governor Pritzker signed the measure on July 6. Developers must also publish a risk-assessment framework spelling out how they handle what the law calls catastrophic risk. The statute puts a concrete number on that phrase. A catastrophic incident is defined as one causing death or injury to 50 or more people, or more than a million dollars in property damage, a threshold that turns an abstract safety debate into an auditable compliance requirement. The bill draws on similar efforts moving through California and New York, and together those three states account for roughly 40% of the US AI market. That scale is the real story. With no federal AI regulation in place, a rule binding on the biggest state markets effectively becomes a national standard, because developers are unlikely to build one model for Illinois and another for everyone else. Expect the audit-and-disclosure approach to spread as more states follow the same template.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: WTTW · Published Thursday, July 23, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Illinois has become the first US state to require annual, independent third-party safety audits of large AI models, after Governor Pritzker signed the measure on July 6. Developers must also publish a risk-assessment framework spelling out how they handle what the law calls catastrophic risk. The statute puts a concrete number on that phrase. A catastrophic incident is defined as one causing death or injury to 50 or more people, or more than a million dollars in property damage, a threshold that turns an abstract safety debate into an auditable compliance requirement. The bill draws on similar efforts moving through California and New York, and together those three states account for roughly 40% of the US AI market. That scale is the real story. With no federal AI regulation in place, a rule binding on the biggest state markets effectively becomes a national standard, because developers are unlikely to build one model for Illinois and another for everyone else. Expect the audit-and-disclosure approach to spread as more states follow the same template.

## Source

[Read the full story at WTTW](https://news.wttw.com/2026/07/06/pritzker-signs-landmark-ai-regulation-bill-aims-mitigate-risks)

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