DENVER — Colorado lawmakers face a daunting task as they return to the State Capitol for a special session on August 21: addressing a $1.2 billion revenue shortfall due to President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill." Legislators are also being tasked with examining and revising a controversial bill that aims to regulate artificial intelligence in Colorado.
Senate Bill 24-205 was signed into law by Governor Jared Polis in May 2024. The goal of the legislation is to "lower the risk of unwanted bias in certain AI-driven decision-making," according to a June 2024 joint statement from the governor, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez.
The statement said the law would be revised to "minimize unintended consequences" before February 2026, when it is scheduled to be implemented. Now, both supporters and opponents of the law believe the deadline will be extended.
"Senate Bill 205 is one of the first of its kind in the United States to try to regulate artificial intelligence with the algorithms in mind," explained State Representative Brianna Titone (D, District 27), who was a prime sponsor of the legislation. "These are consequential decisions like lending, going to school, getting insurance, health care decisions, legal decisions, things like this that are going to have a major impact on your life. We want to make sure that people know that these AI systems are being used, and if people feel that they have not gotten a good result out of putting their request in, that they can seek some kind of relief from that potential discrimination that could have happened."
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Titone said the law provides necessary guidelines for the rapidly growing industry of AI.
"There's lots of money to be made in AI, but just when you're getting your truck to go get that money, don't run everybody over," Titone said. "This is a very troubling time right now with this technology because it's getting out of control, and we have to be able to rein that in a little bit."
The White House has called regulations on AI "onerous" and "burdensome," saying the federal government “should not allow AI-related Federal funding to be directed toward states with burdensome AI regulations that waste these funds, but should also not interfere with states’ rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation."
"It's not really about time. It's about the fact that the federal government changed the policies, and they don't want any kind of regulation anymore," Titone told Denver7. "We're the only state that does this, and we are leading the way, and if they can stop us from leading the way, then they can get rid of all of this altogether."
- Gov. Jared Polis announced the special session on Wednesday. Watched his full press conference below:
The call for the special session from the governor states, "It has become increasingly clear that the application of SB24-205 inadvertently imposes high costs on the state, local governments, and covered businesses."
According to a presentation from the state, implementing SB24-205 in state agencies will cost somewhere between $2.5 and $5 million. That figure stunned Titone.
"I just don't get it," Titone said. "I very distinctly remember when we ran the bill in 2024 that the fiscal note — which is made by nonpartisan staff to understand what the ramifications are to the budget — it said there was no appropriation needed, and very little impact, if any, to any of the divisions, and not anywhere near $5 million."
Denver7 asked the Governor's Office how that number was calculated. A spokesperson sent a statement which said, in part, "State agencies are expecting new workload and administrative costs associated with SB24-205. Unless corrective action is taken during the special session, those agencies will need supplemental budget requests to fund the provisions of SB24-205 when the General Assembly comes back for the regular session in January."
Specifically, the statement said the Judicial Department is anticipating its administrative costs to reach at least $1.4 million because of an increased workload, instead of the previous $700,000 it had predicted.
The statement ended with, "Also, when the bill passed, it was not going to be implemented for two fiscal years, so it would not be typical to put in appropriations that far out.”
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Dr. Samuel Jay is the executive director of digital learning at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He explained the concerns with the law from an industry perspective.
"The main headache that seems to be shared by industry is really the sharing of the data being used in training. I think for proprietary reasons, for market leverage, folks just don't want to share that," Jay told Denver7. "In a nutshell, I think developers were concerned that the transparency that is being required of this bill is a sort of transparency that may limit the market advantage that they have."
Jay said there are also concerns about the amount of work needed to ensure different companies are compliant with the law. Essentially, he said there needs to be better definitions and more details provided in the law.
"It's a regulation as it stands now, according to them, that lacks clear definitions, that lacks a lot of structure when it comes to exactly how a developer is going to follow this, and I think they just don't want to handcuff themselves or put their hands behind their back in ways that clearly other states are not too concerned with," Jay said. "At a minimum, I think folks are just asking for a little bit more time."
Titone said she and her fellow sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez (D, District 32), will work together on a solution for the legislation. She said that was the intent behind Senate Bill 25-318 this year, which failed in the legislature.
"If we get to a place where I think we feel that they're actually wanting to work on policy and making sure that we keep strong consumer protections in there, I'm willing to listen to anything. I just am not sure we can do that in a month," Rodriguez said. "Even if it doesn't happen in special session, I will continue to work on something and would run a bill first day of session."
At the beginning of May, Polis joined a handful of other politicians and sent a letter to the Colorado General Assembly, asking that legislators delay the implementation of SB24-205 until January 2027.
