US states enacted 145 AI-related bills into law in 2025, according to MultiState.ai's State AI Legislation Tracker, out of 1,208 bills introduced across all 50 states. That was the first year every state legislature had filed at least one AI-related bill, and the introduction count nearly doubled 2024's total. The National Conference of State Legislatures counts a more conservative 131 enacted bills using its own tracking rules, and Congress managed only one AI-specific federal law all year.
The gap between trackers is not a mistake. Each organization draws its own line around what counts as "AI-related," and that line matters more than it sounds like it should, because it changes the headline number by tens of bills. Below is what the three most-cited counts show side by side, followed by the year-over-year trend, the federal picture, and which states led the way.
How many AI bills did states enact into law in 2025?
State legislatures enacted 145 AI-related bills in 2025, per MultiState.ai's tracker, out of 1,208 bills introduced across all 50 states. That is the highest annual total on record for state AI lawmaking, and it followed a legislative session in which every single state, for the first time, had at least one AI-related bill on the table.
MultiState.ai, a legislative-tracking firm used by corporate government-affairs teams, defines "AI-related" broadly. Its count includes generative AI rules, AI task force bills, and even autonomous-vehicle legislation that touches AI systems, not just laws that regulate AI directly. That breadth is why its totals sit above other trackers' numbers, the same way a law firm's broad case count sits above a narrower court database in other areas of legal tracking.
Our earlier look at AI and privacy statistics for 2026 found that most consumer-facing AI concern is about data collection, not lawmaking pace. The lawmaking pace turns out to be the faster-moving story: legislative activity on AI more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, even before accounting for the differences between trackers below.
Why do AI bill counts differ between trackers?
Three organizations publish three different 2025 totals, and each one is defensible once you know what it counts.
| Tracker | Bills introduced (2025) | Bills enacted (2025) | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| MultiState.ai | 1,208 | 145 | Broadest: includes task forces, autonomous vehicles, and any bill touching AI |
| National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) | 1,134 | 131 | Nonpartisan legislative database; 40 states enacted at least one law |
| Transparency Coalition | not separately published | 73 | Narrowest: only bills the group classifies as substantive "AI laws," across 27 states |
MultiState.ai's 1,208 introduced and 145 enacted sit at the top because its definition of "AI-related" is the widest of the three. NCSL's Artificial Intelligence Legislation Database, updated monthly and used by state legislative staff themselves, applies a somewhat narrower scope and lands at 1,134 introduced and 131 enacted. The Transparency Coalition, an AI-safety advocacy group, publishes the tightest count: 73 new AI laws across 27 states in its 2025 State AI Legislation Report, counting only bills it judges to be substantively about AI rather than bills that merely mention it. Treat 145 as the most inclusive estimate and 73 as the strictest, most conservative floor.
Figure 1: The same 2025 legislative session, three different enacted-bill counts. Source: MultiState.ai State AI Legislation Tracker, NCSL Artificial Intelligence Legislation Database, Transparency Coalition 2025 State AI Legislation Report.
Even the strictest count, 73 new laws in 27 states, is still more than double the number of dedicated AI laws most trackers recorded just two years earlier. Whichever number a journalist or researcher cites, the direction is the same.
How does 2025 compare to 2024?
AI bill enactments rose from 99 in 2024 to 145 in 2025, a 46% increase, according to MultiState.ai. Introductions grew even faster, nearly doubling from 635 bills across 45 states in 2024 to 1,208 bills across all 50 states in 2025.
Figure 2: Both introductions and enactments grew, but introductions grew faster. Source: MultiState.ai State AI Legislation Tracker.
Part of the jump reflects simple participation: in 2024, five states had not yet introduced a single AI-related bill. By 2025, all 50 had. More states filing bills mechanically produces more enacted laws, but the enactment rate, the share of introduced bills that became law, held roughly steady at 12% in 2024 and 12% in 2025, so the growth is not just noise from more bills chasing the same odds of passage.
Is state AI lawmaking slowing down in 2026?
No. As of March 2026, states had already introduced 1,561 AI-related bills, according to MultiState.ai's live tracker, more than the entirety of 2024's full-year total in a single quarter. That figure is a rolling, partial-year count and will keep climbing as more state sessions open through the spring, so treat it as a floor rather than a final 2026 number.
Figure 3: Introductions kept accelerating into 2026. The 2026 figure covers only the first quarter and is not a full-year total. Source: MultiState.ai State AI Legislation Tracker, tracked through March 2026.
If the first-quarter pace holds, 2026 is on track to exceed 2025's introduction count well before the year is out. State legislatures are not waiting for Congress to settle the question of who regulates AI.
Did Congress pass any federal AI laws in 2025?
Only one AI-specific federal statute became law in 2025: the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed in May 2025, which requires platforms to remove nonconsensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated deepfakes, on request. Dozens of other federal AI bills were introduced in the 119th Congress during 2025, but none reached a floor vote.
The bigger federal story was a fight over whether states could keep legislating at all. A provision inserted into the budget reconciliation bill known as H.R.1 would have imposed a 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation, effectively freezing the 1,208 bills already moving through state capitols. On July 1, 2025, the Senate voted 99 to 1 to strip that moratorium out, with Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina as the lone dissenting vote. H.R.1 was signed into law on July 4, 2025 without the moratorium, leaving state authority over AI intact.
Figure 4: The federal moratorium attempt failed by a near-unanimous margin, clearing the way for states to keep legislating. Source: US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; state legislative records.
With no federal preemption in place, the 40-plus states that already have at least one AI law on the books have no reason to pause, and several more are expected to introduce comprehensive frameworks in 2026.
Which states enacted the most AI laws in 2025?
Forty of the 50 states enacted at least one AI-related law in 2025, according to NCSL, meaning 10 states introduced AI bills but passed none into law that year.
Figure 5: Four out of five states passed at least one AI-related law in 2025. Source: National Conference of State Legislatures, Artificial Intelligence Legislation Database.
Texas signed the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA, HB 149) into law on June 22, 2025, taking a narrower, intent-based approach that prohibits specific harmful uses of AI rather than categorizing systems by risk tier. Colorado's earlier and more comprehensive AI Act, originally set to take effect February 1, 2026, was delayed to June 30, 2026 by an amendment Governor Jared Polis signed on August 28, 2025, giving lawmakers more time to narrow its scope before enforcement begins. California and Illinois both enacted multiple AI-specific laws in 2025 covering consumer disclosure and healthcare use, discussed below.
What did these new state AI laws actually regulate?
Deepfakes and nonconsensual AI-generated imagery were the most-addressed topic in 2025 state AI legislation, according to the Transparency Coalition's 2025 State AI Legislation Report, with 15 states enacting new protections. That builds on 2024, when NCSL recorded nonconsensual explicit deepfake laws as the single most widely enacted AI-related category, passed in 22 states that year alone.
Healthcare was the second major theme: 8 states passed laws addressing AI's role in medical decisions in 2025. Illinois banned the commercial use of AI therapy chatbots, while California and Oregon prohibited AI systems from representing themselves as licensed medical professionals to patients. Employment was also a heavily regulated area, though multiple trackers describe it qualitatively as one of the most active categories without publishing a single comparable state count, so no specific figure is cited here.
| Topic area | States active (2025) | Example law | Effective date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deepfakes / nonconsensual AI imagery | 15 states | Expanded nonconsensual-imagery statutes | Varies by state |
| Healthcare AI use | 8 states | Illinois ban on commercial AI therapy chatbots | 2025-2026 |
| Comprehensive AI governance | Colorado, Texas among the first | Texas TRAIGA (HB 149) | January 1, 2026 |
| Total enacted (all topics) | 40 states (NCSL) | 145 bills, per MultiState.ai's full 2025 count | Throughout 2025 |
Consumer-facing AI transparency, the requirement that a business disclose when a customer is interacting with an AI system or when AI shaped a decision about them, appeared across many of these laws even where it was not the headline topic.
How can a website tell if a 2025 AI law applies to it?
Figure 6: A basic screening test for whether a site needs to update its disclosures for a new state AI law. Source: PrivacyTerms.io, based on the enacted-law patterns summarized above.
Most of the 145 laws enacted in 2025 apply to specific consumer-facing uses of AI, such as chatbots, automated decision tools, or AI-generated content, rather than to AI use in general. A site running a customer-facing AI chatbot in a state with a disclosure requirement needs its privacy policy to say so plainly. Sites can keep that language current without hand-drafting it from scratch using a privacy policy generator built to cover AI-use disclosures alongside the standard data-collection sections regulators check first.
The Bottom Line
State AI lawmaking is not slowing down. Whether the real 2025 count is MultiState.ai's inclusive 145, NCSL's more conservative 131, or the Transparency Coalition's strict 73, every credible tracker agrees enactments rose sharply from 2024 and that 2026 is already on pace to exceed 2025. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a single AI-specific law all year and came within one vote of losing the ability to stop states from regulating AI at all. For any site using AI in a customer-facing way, that combination, more state laws and no federal ceiling, means disclosure requirements are more likely to change from underneath a stale privacy policy than to stay put. The practical response is the same one that worked for GDPR and CCPA: review AI-related disclosures at least as often as state legislatures meet, not once and never again.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many AI-related bills did US states pass into law in 2025? State lawmakers enacted 145 AI-related bills into law in 2025, according to MultiState.ai's State AI Legislation Tracker, out of 1,208 bills introduced across all 50 states. The National Conference of State Legislatures counts a narrower 131 enacted bills using its own tracking methodology.
Did Congress pass any AI laws in 2025? Only one federal AI-specific statute became law in 2025: the TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed in May 2025, which targets nonconsensual intimate imagery including AI-generated deepfakes. Dozens of other federal AI bills were introduced in the 119th Congress but none reached a floor vote.
Which states enacted the most AI bills in 2025? All 50 states introduced at least one AI-related bill in 2025 for the first time, and 40 states enacted at least one into law, per the National Conference of State Legislatures. California, Texas, Illinois, and Colorado produced some of the year's most consequential individual laws.
How does 2025's AI legislation total compare to 2024? AI bill introductions nearly doubled, from 635 in 2024 to 1,208 in 2025, while enactments rose from 99 to 145, a 46% increase, according to MultiState.ai's tracker.
Where the Numbers Come From
- MultiState.ai. (2026). "State AI Legislation Tracker." 1,208 bills introduced and 145 enacted across all 50 states in 2025; 635 introduced and 99 enacted across 45 states in 2024; 1,561 introduced as of March 2026.
- National Conference of State Legislatures. (2026). "Summary of Artificial Intelligence 2025 Legislation." 1,134 bills introduced and 131 enacted, 40 states enacted at least one AI law; 22 states enacted nonconsensual deepfake laws in 2024.
- Transparency Coalition. (2026). "2025 State AI Legislation Report." 73 new AI laws enacted across 27 states; deepfakes the most-addressed topic in 15 states; healthcare AI use regulated in 8 states.
- US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. (2025). "Senate Strikes AI Moratorium From Budget Reconciliation Bill in Overwhelming 99-1 Vote." July 1, 2025.
- K&L Gates. (2025). "Pared Back Version of the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act Signed Into Law." TRAIGA (HB 149) signed June 22, 2025, effective January 1, 2026.
- Clark Hill PLC. (2025). "Colorado's AI Law Delayed Until June 2026." Effective date pushed from February 1, 2026 to June 30, 2026 via SB25B-004, signed August 28, 2025.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. The March 2026 introduction count is a partial-year, live-tracker figure and will change as 2026 sessions continue; 2025 enactment totals are treated as final for this post but are refreshed at least twice a year as trackers finalize year-end counts.
