About the Project

The AI Policy Atlas is a non-partisan data explorer tool for artificial intelligence and advanced computing policies that have been enacted across all 50 U.S. states. This project tracks and analyzes state-level legislation related to AI, machine learning, and related technologies and infrastructure.

This project seeks to support public discussions and policy research on the emerging opportunities and challenges related to AI and advanced computing. By examining how all of the states have discussed and responded to the emerging changes brought by the use of AI, we seek to promote responsible technology adoption across sectors, including industry, education, healthcare, government, and everyday life in Illinois and beyond.


Project Goals

  • Document and track enacted AI-related legislation across all 50 U.S. states
  • Provide a searchable database of legal definitions for AI-related terms
  • Create visual tools for understanding the landscape of AI policy
  • Support researchers, policymakers, and the public in understanding AI governance
  • Accelerate Illinois' leadership and innovation in AI and advanced technology

Methodology

This dataset reviews enacted AI legislation from 2023-2025, with 2023 being a key pivot point for generative AI with the commercial release of ChatGPT in November 2022. A web search of passed laws was conducted LegiScan (legiscan.com) for all 50 states for 2023, 2024, and 2025. Bills were eligible for review if they contained a positive match for the following search string: “artificial intelligence” OR AI OR “machine learning” OR ML OR algorithm OR automated OR generative. Also, bills must have additionally been passed (e.g., signed by the governor) between the 2023 to 2025 review period to be included.

Each bill was fully read and annotated by one of the human team members. AI was not used in this review process. Bills were reviewed for whether they actually pertained to AI, or just have a cursory mention. Non-binding resolutions or legislative committee directives were not included, as they did not provide policy mandates.

Each eligible bill was annotated by the team with the following parameters:

  • A short summary of the bill
  • Specific policy mandates
  • A list of keywords
  • Verbatim legal definitions of AI terms
  • Stakeholders who would be affected by the bill

Once annotations were complete, a thematic analysis was conducted on the bills to compare, contrast, and catgeorize the bills into types of policies they contained (Terry et al., 2017). A single bill could be included in several policy area categories. 13 distinct categories emerged from the analysis, which resulted in the dataset on the AI Policy Explorer map when sorting by category.

The dataset for the AI Policy Atlas will be regularly updated by the project team as new laws take effect.

Notes: There are several AI-related and AI-adjacent bills that can pertain to artificial intelligence technologies that existed in statute before 2023 across the states. It was beyond the scope of this project at the time of review to identify all of these laws. Additionally, because this method used a systematic keyword-based search, there are possibilities that some laws that are related to AI did not appear on the search. Future versions of the AI Policy Atlas will attempt to capture a broader scope of laws across the states beyond this initial methodology.


Supplemental Resources

This project is hosted by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois System. The dataset used for this website will be available open-source for researchers, legislators, and the public. This dataset will be available in early 2026 at the IGPA Data Hub.


Project Team

Project Lead (corresponding author)

Jeremy Riel, PhD - Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago

Project Team

Elham Buxton, PhD - Associate Professor, University of Illinois Springfield

Ying Chen, PhD - Senior Research Associate, Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Alvin Chin, PhD - Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago

Craig W. De Voto PhD - Visiting Research Associate, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois System

Gagandeep Singh, PhD - Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Ken Suh - Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Lav R. Varshney, PhD - Director and Professor, AI Innovation Institute, Stony Brook University & Adjunct Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign


Contact

For questions, suggestions, or collaboration inquiries, please contact the project lead through the University of Illinois Chicago.


Suggested Citation

Riel, J., Varshney, L. R., Singh, G., De Voto, C. W., Buxton, E., Chen, Y., Chin, A., & Suh, K. (2026). AI Policy Atlas. Institute of Government and Public Affairs Data Hub. https://www.aipolicyatlas.com.