Governors of Illinois, California, and Oregon accelerate AI safety measures with executive orders

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed executive orders within a week to advance regulation of frontier AI models. Illinois' executive order establishes the Illinois Artificial Intelligence Cabinet to advise the state government on responding to AI incidents and protecting public assets and infrastructure, building on the independent third-party safety audits required by the 2026 Illinois AI Safety Measures Act. Oregon's executive order EO 26-26 requires the state chief information officer to submit an implementation plan within 90 days, assessing the feasibility of requiring kill switches for frontier AI models. Reports say these actions respond to recent AI incidents involving frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic.