As Illinois legislators who have passed some of our state’s most significant legislation on artificial intellgence, we know what we’re talking about when we tell you President Donald Trump’s Dec. 11 AI executive order is unenforceable, dangerous and a nonstarter for our state.

With lightning speed, AI is reshaping our economy. The way we live, work, play and increasingly make some of our most intimate decisions all will involve AI now. These tools promise enormous benefits, but only if they are deployed responsibly.

States such as Illinois have enacted targeted, commonsense guardrails to protect children, prevent discrimination and ensure transparency when AI is used to make consequential decisions affecting people’s lives. These measures respond to real and documented harms and don’t stand in the way of innovation or competitiveness.

Here are a few examples. In 2025, we passed HB1806 to prevent AI from being used to diagnose or treat mental illness or marketed as if it does. SB243 prevents the misuse of AI tools by allowing local governments to verify that Freedom of Information Act requests come from real people. HB35 bans insurance companies from using AI to deny health insurance claims. In 2024, we passed HB4623 to ban the use of generative AI to create explicit and pornographic images of children and HB2123 to combat anyone who creates or distributes a digitally altered sexual image (deepfake) of an individual without their consent.

This is how you legislate on the AI issue. Use a thoughtful, consistent approach with input from stakeholders, advocates and regular people to address real problems.

We welcome this happening at the federal level to avoid a patchwork of state laws, provide developers of large AI language models a comprehensive national framework, and promote clarity and consistency across the market. This will ensure America leads on this important technological innovation.

But so far, it seems that Congress has sided with Big Tech’s “move fast and break things” attitude.

Earlier last year, Congress came close to adopting a 10-year total ban on any regulation of AI. Such a sweeping regulatory freeze would have been a disaster at a time when we are already behind the curve on regulating this new technology. Absent clear public standards, decisions about safety, transparency and accountability are left primarily to profit-seeking large corporations that have proved time and again they will prioritize the bottom line before people’s health and safety.

Rather than filling that gap, the Trump administration’s executive order attempts to roll back state laws in Illinois and elsewhere that are designed to protect the public.

Worse still, the order tries to bully states into abandoning their laws, threatening to illegally withhold federal dollars unless we stop addressing AI-enabled scams, deepfakes and other technologies that have already caused financial, reputational and personal harm to children and families. In reality, these threats have little legal footing. Time and time again, courts have slapped down these strong-arm tactics that lack the force of law. So much for this administration standing for “states’ rights.”

As AI evolves, we have already seen the real-world harm caused by releasing powerful systems without meaningful oversight, and we are living with the consequences of unregulated technology. Families have lost their life savings to AI phone scams that perfectly mimic loved ones’ voices. Deepfakes have destroyed reputations overnight. And most chilling of all, AI chatbots have interacted with vulnerable children in ways that encouraged self-harm, with tragic and fatal consequences. These are not bugs to be fixed later; they are foreseeable harms. Innovation without guardrails isn’t progress — it’s a reckless gamble with people’s lives.

AI has the potential to define the next era of American leadership. Whether it does so safely, ethically and democratically depends on the choices we make right now. But in the absence of meaningful congressional action, states must step up to confront real and documented harms.

We in Illinois have chosen to act responsibly; Washington should follow our lead instead of trying to punish us. If the response from D.C. is to set best practices for reasonable regulation, we will work constructively with them. If they instead want to disrupt bipartisan state-level efforts aimed at establishing basic safeguards, we won’t stand down and be bullied.

Our citizens deserve their leaders working hard on meaningful AI regulations to protect them. This is what we will do in our upcoming legislative session.

State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, represents the 58th District. Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, represents the 17th District. Rep. Daniel Didech, D-Buffalo Grove, represents the 59th District. 

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