AI Video Interview Act and HB 3773
The one-paragraph answer
Illinois AI laws focus on employment and biometrics. The AI Video Interview Act (2020, updated) requires employers using AI to analyze video interviews to notify applicants, obtain consent, and provide reports. HB 3773 (Illinois Human Rights Act amendment, effective 2026) prohibits AI use in employment decisions that produces discriminatory effects. Illinois also has the strongest biometric privacy law in the country, BIPA, which now touches most AI systems that process facial images or voice.
Illinois is where AI-in-employment lawsuits start. The state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) has produced billion-dollar class actions against companies that used facial recognition, voice AI, or biometric data without proper consent. HB 3773 extends this litigation-friendly environment to AI hiring, promotion, and management decisions. Any company hiring in Illinois or using AI to screen Illinois applicants needs to understand the stack, because Illinois plaintiffs' lawyers are among the most aggressive in the country.
In effect since 2020, amended since. Employers using AI to analyze video interviews for Illinois positions must: notify applicants that AI will be used before the interview, explain how the AI works and what characteristics it evaluates, obtain the applicant's consent, limit access to the video to those who need it for AI training or evaluation, and destroy the video within 30 days of an applicant's request.
Effective January 1, 2026. Amends the Illinois Human Rights Act to prohibit employers from using AI that has "the effect of subjecting employees to discrimination on the basis of protected classes." This is a disparate impact standard applied specifically to AI. Prohibits AI use that produces discriminatory effects even without discriminatory intent.
Signed by Governor Pritzker on July 6, 2026. The first US state law to require annual independent third-party audits of frontier AI models. Applies to "frontier developers" (those training frontier models above a 10^26 FLOP computational threshold), with the heaviest obligations reserved for "large frontier developers" (frontier developers with more than $500 million in annual gross revenue). Requires: (1) publishing and annually updating a catastrophic risk framework covering incidents that could cause death or injury to more than 50 people or more than $1 billion in property damage; (2) filing pre-deployment transparency reports; (3) reporting critical safety incidents; (4) statutory whistleblower protections; (5) annual independent third-party audits of compliance. Illinois Attorney General has exclusive enforcement, civil penalties up to $1 million for a first offense and $3 million for subsequent violations, plus separate daily penalties up to $1,000 per day tied to disclosure failures. No private right of action. The effective dates are split: the Act takes effect January 1, 2027, when large frontier developers must have a disclosure statement on file with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, whistleblower protections apply, and the daily disclosure penalties begin; the core operational obligations, the documented frontier AI framework, the pre-deployment transparency reports, and the annual independent third-party audits, take effect January 1, 2028. The 2027-to-2028 split for the core obligations was a deliberate legislative amendment, not a drafting ambiguity. Together with California SB-53 and New York's RAISE Act, the Illinois SB 315 cluster covers approximately 40 percent of the US AI market and creates a de facto national standard for frontier developer safety.
Enacted 2008. Prohibits collection, storage, or use of biometric identifiers (fingerprints, retina scans, facial geometry, voiceprints) without written informed consent. AI systems that process these biometrics, including facial recognition, voice authentication, and behavioral biometrics, must comply. BIPA has a private right of action with statutory damages of $1,000 to $5,000 per violation.
BIPA class actions have produced multi-billion-dollar settlements. HB 3773 will produce a new wave of employment AI litigation starting in 2026. The AI Video Interview Act is enforced actively by the Illinois Department of Labor and by private plaintiffs. If you have Illinois employees, Illinois applicants, or Illinois consumers whose biometric data touches your AI, you are in scope. The stack is not aspirational: it is producing real litigation now.
The academic literature on Illinois AI laws is ahead of most corporate practice, and it is unusually blunt. Two findings are worth putting in front of any executive who thinks this is a compliance formality.
“the automation of hiring both facilitates and obfuscates employment discrimination”
That is the gap between having AI and governing it. The second finding is the one that tends to change the room.
“under-representation concerning gender and ethnicity in the training data set leads to unpredictable overestimation or underestimation”
Neither of these is a fringe position. Both come from peer-reviewed work, and both describe the condition most organisations are actually in when the question about Illinois AI laws arrives from the board, the buyer, or the regulator.
This is the sequence that works, and it is not the sequence most organisations choose. They start with the framework and work backwards toward reality. Start with reality.
Done in this order, Illinois AI laws becomes tractable. Done out of order, it becomes a document nobody uses and a control nobody exercises.
Yes. Voiceprints are covered biometrics. Any AI that identifies or authenticates by voice is regulated. This has produced significant litigation against voice AI providers.
Enforcement under the Illinois Human Rights Act, including administrative complaints and civil litigation. Discrimination claims can produce substantial damages.
Yes, if you interview Illinois applicants for positions to be filled in Illinois. The obligation follows the applicant.
Volume III of The Operating Discipline for AI Library™ addresses Illinois requirements in the HR addendum. The Bias Audit Working Reference from Volume III supports HB 3773 compliance.
The authoritative texts and agency pages behind this summary. We keep this page current, but where a compliance decision turns on exact wording, read the source. Anything concerning Illinois AI laws that carries legal consequence should be confirmed against the enrolled text or the issuing body, not against a secondary summary, including this one.
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