Rift Between Top AI Firms Erupts Over Illinois Liability Immunity Bill
Leading AI developer Anthropic has publicly opposed a proposed Illinois law backed by rival OpenAI that would grant broad liability immunity to AI research labs for large-scale harm caused by misuse of their systems—including events resulting in mass casualties or over $1 billion in property damage.
The clash over the legislation, labeled Senate Bill 3444 (SB 3444), has drawn sharp new battle lines between the two companies over how AI technologies should be regulated. While AI policy analysts note the bill has only a remote chance of being enacted, it has laid bare deep political divides between two of the United States’ most high-profile AI labs. These rifts are expected to grow increasingly consequential as the competing firms ramp up their lobbying activity across the country.
According to people familiar with internal discussions, Anthropic has been lobbying behind the scenes to sway SB 3444 sponsor State Senator Bill Cunningham and other Illinois lawmakers, pushing them to either make sweeping changes to the bill or scrap the proposal entirely in its current form. In an email to WIRED, an Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the company’s opposition to SB 3444, and added that the firm has held promising conversations with Cunningham about using the existing proposal as a starting point for future AI legislation.
“We are opposed to this bill as written. Strong transparency legislation needs to prioritize public safety and hold companies developing this powerful technology accountable, not hand out a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card from all liability,” Cesar Fernandez, Anthropic’s head of U.S. state and local government relations, said in a statement. “We know that Senator Cunningham cares deeply about AI safety, and we look forward to working with him on changes that would instead pair transparency requirements with real accountability for mitigating the most serious harms frontier AI systems could cause.”
Representatives for Cunningham did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker released the following statement: “While the Governor’s Office will monitor and review the many AI bills moving through the General Assembly, Governor Pritzker does not believe big tech companies should ever be given a full shield that evades responsibilities they should have to protect the public interest.”
At the core of OpenAI and Anthropic’s disagreement over SB 3444 is a fundamental fight over who should bear legal liability in the event of an AI-enabled large-scale disaster—a worst-case scenario U.S. lawmakers have only recently begun to address. If SB 3444 were passed, an AI lab would face no legal responsibility if a bad actor used its AI model to, for example, engineer a bioweapon that kills hundreds of people. This immunity would apply as long as the lab drafted its own internal safety framework and published it on its public website.
OpenAI has argued that SB 3444 reduces the risk of serious harm from frontier AI systems while “still allowing this technology to get into the hands of the people and businesses—small and big—of Illinois.”
The ChatGPT developer says it has already collaborated with states including New York and California to build what it calls a “harmonized” approach to AI regulation. “In the absence of federal action, we will continue to work with states—including Illinois—to work toward a consistent safety framework,” OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said in a statement. “We hope these state laws will inform a national framework that will help ensure the U.S. continues to lead globally in AI innovation.”
Anthropic, by contrast, argues that companies developing frontier AI models should be held at least partially responsible if their technology is misused to cause widespread societal harm.
Some policy experts warn the bill would dismantle existing regulations designed to deter reckless behavior by AI firms. "Liability already exists under common law and provides a powerful incentive for AI companies to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable risks from their AI systems,” says Thomas Woodside, cofounder and senior policy adviser at the Secure AI Project, a nonprofit that has helped develop and advocate for AI safety laws in California and New York. “SB 3444 would take the extreme step of nearly eliminating liability for severe harms. It’s a bad idea to weaken liability, which in most states is the most significant form of legal accountability for AI companies already on the books."
Last week, Anthropic testified in favor of a separate Illinois state bill, SB 3261, which would become one of the nation’s strongest AI safety laws if it passes. That legislation requires frontier AI developers like OpenAI and Anthropic to create public safety and child protection plans, and requires those plans to be tested by independent third-party auditors to measure their effectiveness.
Founded five years ago by a group of former OpenAI employees who left the company over internal disputes, Anthropic has built a reputation for openly warning about the risks of advanced artificial intelligence and advocating for strict safeguards to prevent harm. That approach has repeatedly landed the company in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has sought to roll back state-level AI regulations that it argues could hamper U.S. AI development. David Sacks, the Trump administration’s former AI and crypto czar, complained in a social media post last year that Anthropic was running a “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”
Update 4/14/26 11:35 am EDT: This story has been updated to include a statement from Illinois governor JB Pritzker's office.
