Datasheet: US AI Law Database, release v0.8.1-2026-11-08

Prepared November 8, 2026. Maintained by the AI Governance Collective (Dr. Kyle David, editor).

Public census: a free subset with the basic facts for every record (state, name, citation, topic, status, dates, official source) is on Hugging Face at drdavidprivacy/us-ai-law-database-census, under CC BY 4.0. The full records, obligations, and definitions are for members.

About this document

A datasheet is a structured description of a dataset, written by the people who built it, that answers a fixed list of questions: why the data exists, what it contains, how it was gathered and checked, what it should and should not be used for, how it is distributed, and how it will be maintained. The format follows "Datasheets for Datasets" (Gebru et al., 2021). The questions below are the paper's, in the paper's order; the human-subjects questions that do not apply are noted and skipped. Where the project's records do not answer a question, the answer says "Not applicable" or "Not yet determined" rather than guessing.

This datasheet describes release v0.8.1-2026-11-08 of the US AI Law Database, the structured companion to the US State AI Laws library. Every page of the database shows its release tag. When a new release ships, this datasheet will be revised to match.

1. Motivation

For what purpose was the dataset created? Was there a specific task in mind? Was there a specific gap that needed to be filled?

The database exists so that AI governance professionals (GRC, legal, privacy, and AI/ML practitioners) can answer specific questions about United States AI statutes without re-reading every act: which laws reach a developer versus a deployer, what a law requires and by when, who enforces it, whether a private party can sue, and what the penalty unit is. The gap is structural. Trackers and alerts summarize, rarely cite the section, and tend to flatten scoped provisions into absolutes. This database was designed so that every cell traces to a section of the enacted text and carries a flag saying how it was verified.

The underlying library began as course material on state AI law and became a library-first effort. The database is its queryable form, and the project's stated direction is to grow it toward a US-focused retrieval database for an agent.

Who created the dataset and on behalf of which entity?

Dr. David (AIGP, CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, FIP, CISSP, AAISM), founder of the AI Governance Collective, on behalf of the Collective. Dr. David sets the standing rules, decides which laws and bands are admitted, and reviews every batch. AI assistance (Claude) is used for text extraction, drafting, cross-referencing, and the adversarial fact-check audits, under those rules and with the verbatim statutory text as the controlling source.

Who funded the creation of the dataset?

Not yet determined in any public record. The project documents name no grant or outside funder; the only funding arrangement they describe is that the database is a benefit of Collective membership.

Any other comments?

The database is a reference for governance work, not legal advice. Anyone relying on it for a legal position should verify against the official source, which each record links.

2. Composition

What do the instances that comprise the dataset represent? Are there multiple types of instances?

Five tables hold five instance types. An instrument is one enacted law, or one multi-bill package treated as a single law (Michigan's Public Acts 263 through 266). A duty is one typed obligation a law imposes. A term is one verbatim statutory definition. An event is one dated occurrence for a law. A source is one external document used by any field.

How many instances are there in total?

126 law records, of which 118 count as current in-scope instruments and 8 are excluded but retained for reference: the repealed Colorado SB 24-205, the superseded original New York RAISE Act, the Tennessee study act SB 1700, the Tennessee authentic-image context note SB 2041, three struck or enjoined election-deepfake statutes (California AB 2839, California AB 2655, Hawaii Act 191), and Minnesota Statutes section 325E.91, enjoined pending appeal by the Eighth Circuit on or about October 2, 2026. 125 records are state instruments and 1 is federal, the TAKE IT DOWN Act, admitted because it anchors the state cluster of non-consensual intimate imagery laws. The duties table has 526 rows across 13 duty types; the terms table has 379 definitions; instrument records carry 235 chamber roll-call rows and 26 rulemaking delegations. Row counts for the events and sources tables are not reported in the release notes.

The 118 current instruments are organized by regulatory model into eleven bands:

Band 10 was founded on September 13, 2026, with release v0.6.0. Band 11, Professions and Public Institutions, was founded on October 11, 2026, with release v0.7.0; its criterion is laws governing how licensed professionals, courts, and public institutions may use, disclose, or procure AI, where the duty runs to the professional or institution rather than to a developer or deployer. Release v0.7.0 added seventeen California acts signed August 22 to September 30, 2026, including the AI Transparency Act rewrite (SB 1000, in force September 30, 2026), the No Robo Bosses Act (SB 947), and the AI-is-not-a-person act (SB 1159), and it opened the band 2 Workplace and Employment sub-cluster and the criminal-code category. Release v0.8.0 added two instruments: New York's Chapter 368 of 2026 (General Business Law Article 48, which prohibits unsafe AI companion features for minors; signed October 28, 2026, effective January 1, 2027), in band 4, and Pennsylvania's Act 99 of 2026 (SB 806, which requires disclosure of AI in advertising; signed October 22, 2026, effective December 21, 2026), in band 3. Act 99 is Pennsylvania's first entry in the database. This release, v0.8.1, adds one instrument already in force: Maine's Public Law 2025, chapter 294 (LD 1727, 10 M.R.S. section 1500-DD; signed June 12, 2025, in force September 24, 2025), in band 4. It bars using an AI chatbot or other computer technology in trade and commerce in a way that may mislead a reasonable consumer into believing they are dealing with a human, unless the consumer is clearly and conspicuously told otherwise, and makes a violation a violation of the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act. The release also recodes the private right of action for Maine's AI therapy law (LD 2082), which uses the same enforcement clause, so both Maine records read the same way. Band 6 includes a complete 33-note census of election-deepfake laws across 30 states, 2019 through 2026.

Does the dataset contain all possible instances or is it a sample of instances from a larger set?

It is a curated set: not a sample, and not a census of every statute that mentions AI. All fifty states were screened for enactments from 2019 through October 2026. Admission follows standing rules: only signed laws are admitted (pending bills stay on a watch list); struck or enjoined laws are kept as non-counted reference records; federal statutes enter only where they anchor a state cluster. Scope is statutes only, with no regulations, executive orders, or bills. Election-deepfake laws are in. General privacy laws and neurorights laws are out, and those scope decisions are parked rather than settled. Criminal-code AI amendments were admitted with release v0.7.0, starting with California SB 1276, which adds AI-generated matter to the state's child sexual abuse material and mandated-reporter definitions. Within the scope it claims, the set is treated as complete as of the release date; a reconciliation gate fails the build if the count of current instruments disagrees with the library's index.

What data does each instance consist of?

Each instrument record carries identity (state, bill, chapter, codified citation, official source URL), dates (signed, effective, operative, sunset), status, band, covered roles and the statute's own actor terms, numeric thresholds, enforcer, private right of action, penalties with units, cure periods, rulemaking delegations, litigation posture, sponsor party, governor party, trifecta at enactment, and roll-call votes. Each duty row carries a type, the actor role it binds, its trigger, its deadline or cadence, a scoped description, a citation into the library note, and a confidence flag. Each term row carries the defined term and the statute's exact words. The database does not contain the full text of each act; that lives in the private library notes every record cites.

Is there a label or target associated with each instance?

Not in the machine-learning sense. Several fields are editorial classifications and are flagged as such: the band, the sub-cluster within a band, and the definitional family a law's AI definition belongs to (federal-style, EU-style inference, technique-based, generative-output, or other). Duty types come from a fixed 13-value vocabulary: prohibition, disclosure, protocol, reporting, notice, consent, documentation, audit, takedown, registration, detection-tool, contract-terms, and other.

Is any information missing from individual instances?

Yes, and the schema marks it. A value known to exist but not yet captured is flagged "pending" and compiles to null plus the flag; this release reports zero pending fields. Some absences are real: five laws passed by voice vote and have no floor tallies, and five committee or budget bills have no individual lead sponsor. Penalties that ride an external statutory schedule, such as a state's unfair and deceptive practices act, are described in words rather than given as figures the AI statute does not state. The schema has no per-duty expiry field, so two California SB 243 duty rows that cease to be law on January 1, 2027 remain in the duties table with the expiry recorded only in the record's notes.

Are relationships between individual instances made explicit?

Yes. Duties, terms, and events reference their instrument by a stable identifier. A superseded law points at its replacement (New York RAISE 2026 to RAISE 2025). Litigation entries carry a stable case slug shared with the events table so a future case-law dataset can join on it. Multi-bill instruments list every constituent bill.

Are there recommended data splits?

Not applicable. This is a reference dataset, not a training corpus.

Are there any errors, sources of noise, or redundancies in the dataset?

Known ones are listed here. Every 2026 California text is mirrored from LegiScan because the official site blocks automated retrieval, and their chapter numbers come from aggregators pending official posting. Some vote tallies conflict between sources and are recorded with both figures (SB 867 in the Senate, 40-0 versus 39-0). Effective dates for non-urgency California acts are inferred from the constitutional default of January 1 following enactment where the text is silent, and are labeled as inferred. The covered_roles field uses "other" for auditors, verification bodies, advertisers, employers, the State Bar, and the California State University because the role vocabulary predates those bands. Litigation posture is secondary-sourced and dated. Two court orders are described from press reports because the orders themselves were not retrieved: RealPage v. James (S.D.N.Y., September 29, 2026), which enjoined part of New York General Business Law section 340-b, and X.AI v. Ellison (8th Cir., about October 2, 2026), which enjoined Minnesota Statutes section 325E.91 pending appeal; the scope of each is tagged single-sourced. Two source gaps carried into this release: the New York Assembly's roll-call tally for Chapter 368 of 2026 had not been published when the release compiled, so that record carries the Senate tally only; and Pennsylvania had not yet posted the enrolled text of Act 99 of 2026, so that record was extracted from the final printer's number (1808) of SB 806 as passed, and its Pamphlet Laws page citation (P.L. 731) is single-sourced to the legislature's 2026 Acts index. Both fields will be checked against the official postings in the next pass. The duty rows for California SB 942 and AB 853 describe the pre-amendment text until the January 2027 maintenance pass swaps in the text as amended by SB 1000 and AB 2713.

The error pattern the audits hunt is compression that flattens scoped provisions into absolutes: dropped intent elements, dropped qualifiers such as "in violation of state or federal law," wrong penalty units, and effective versus operative dates conflated. The audit for this release corrected every finding it raised, but the pattern is a standing risk in any hand-authored legal summary and readers should expect residual instances.

Is the dataset self-contained, or does it link to or otherwise rely on external resources?

Every record carries the official legislature or code URL and, for political fields, a link to the legislature or vote record. There is no guarantee those pages stay constant, but the database does not depend on them at query time: the values were transcribed, the private library keeps the verbatim text as it existed at extraction, and each release is a frozen snapshot. The statutory words belong to the public. The mirrors used for some texts (LegiScan, state.public.law, Justia, FindLaw) have their own terms of use, which have not been assessed for downstream reuse.

Does the dataset contain data that might be considered confidential?

No. Everything derives from enacted law, public legislative records, and public court filings.

Does the dataset contain data that, if viewed directly, might be offensive, insulting, threatening, or might otherwise cause anxiety?

Some of it, in statutory language. Band 6 covers non-consensual intimate imagery and sexual deepfakes, and the definitions and duty descriptions quote the statutes' terms for sexual conduct and intimate imagery, including provisions concerning minors. Band 4 companion-chatbot laws describe required crisis protocols for suicidal ideation and self-harm. The text is legal rather than graphic, but readers working in those bands should expect it.

Does the dataset identify any subpopulations?

Not in the demographic sense. Political metadata records the party of a bill's primary sponsor, the party of the governor who signed it, and the state's trifecta at enactment.

Is it possible to identify individuals, either directly or indirectly, from the dataset?

Only public officials and litigants in their public roles: governors from signing dates and states, lead sponsors from the cited legislative records, and litigants from case names (xAI v. Bonta). No private individuals appear.

Does the dataset contain data that might be considered sensitive in any way?

The party affiliation of public officials as recorded in public legislative records. Nothing else in the sensitive categories applies.

Any other comments?

The database is deep rather than exhaustive by design. Any summary or visual derived from it should carry a "laws in this database, as of release date" caveat.

3. Collection Process

How was the data associated with each instance acquired? Was it directly observable, reported by subjects, or inferred or derived from other data? If derived, was it validated?

The data comes from a three-level source hierarchy. First, enacted statutory text, transcribed verbatim from official legislature sites or, where those block automated retrieval, from mirrors, with dual-source cross-checks on every operative passage; statutory words are never edited, and drafting quirks are preserved and noted. Second, the library: 125 Markdown law notes, each with an "At a glance" summary that cites sections, cross-links, and the full verbatim text. The library is the source of truth. Third, the database: one YAML record per law, authored from the notes, with every legal-fact field citing its note section and block anchor. Political fields cite legislature and vote records directly, never the note, and never carry the verified-verbatim flag.

Every field carries one of five confidence flags: verified-verbatim (quoted from the embedded statute text), dual-sourced, single-sourced, editorial (a classification judgment), or pending. Validation is by adversarial audit, described next.

What mechanisms or procedures were used to collect the data? How were they validated?

Text retrieval used web search and fetch only; no scraping scripts. Extraction, note drafting, and record authoring were done by AI agents working from the verbatim texts under written rules, with the notes as the sole source for legal fields and no web access during record authoring. A compile script (compile.py) is the only path from the YAML records to the SQLite, CSV, JSON, Parquet, and Postgres outputs, and derived files are never hand-edited. The compile validates every record against a schema, checks that every cited note file and block anchor exists, and runs the reconciliation gate against the library's index.

The process is validated by adversarial fact-check. Every batch of notes and every release is reviewed by an independent agent instructed to refute each claim against the verbatim text; findings are graded FATAL, MATERIAL, or MINOR and applied by fix scripts that abort if any text anchor fails. The audit for this release (November 7, 2026) used two independent reviewers and returned 44 findings, none of them fatal, all corrected before release. The v0.7.0 audit (October 11, 2026) used five independent reviewers and returned 95 findings across the batch: 4 fatal, 39 material, 52 minor, all corrected. The v0.6.0 audit (September 13, 2026) returned 47 findings: 0 fatal, 8 material, 39 minor, all corrected. Earlier database audits found 3 fatal errors in total (an effective date copied from the wrong field, fixed in the extraction script so the fix survives regeneration, and two vote tallies), all corrected. Each audit's log is appended to the library's decision tree and to the dataset's PROVENANCE.md.

If the dataset is a sample from a larger set, what was the sampling strategy?

Not applicable. Admission is deterministic under the standing rules in Section 2.

Who was involved in the data collection process and how were they compensated?

Dr. David, as editor, and AI agents (Claude) under his direction. No students, crowdworkers, or contractors were involved.

Over what timeframe was the data collected? Does this match the creation timeframe of the data associated with the instances?

The laws were enacted between 2019 and October 2026. The database layer was authored between schema approval on July 28, 2026 and this release on November 8, 2026, in nine numbered releases shipped between August and November 2026, on top of library notes built over the preceding months. The newest records are New York's Chapter 368 of 2026 (signed October 28, 2026) and Pennsylvania's Act 99 of 2026 (signed October 22, 2026), both added with release v0.8.0. Maine's Public Law 2025, chapter 294 (signed June 12, 2025) was added with this release.

Were any ethical review processes conducted?

Not applicable. The data is public law and public legislative record.

Does the dataset relate to people?

Only incidentally, through public officials and litigants named in public records. The remaining human-subjects questions in this section (direct collection, notification, consent, revocation, impact analysis) are not applicable.

4. Preprocessing, Cleaning, and Labeling

Was any preprocessing, cleaning, or labeling of the data done?

Yes, at two levels. Between the statute and the library note, the enacted text was transcribed verbatim and normalized into Markdown with every delta accounted for by formatting only. Between the note and the database, editors assigned bands, sub-clusters, and definitional families (all flagged editorial); typed each duty against the 13-value vocabulary; normalized actor roles to seven values (developer, deployer, operator, platform, provider, any-person, other) while keeping the statute's own actor terms verbatim alongside; encoded penalties as amount, unit, and per-what with the original prose preserved; and derived the "counted" flag mechanically from status. Audit fixes go into the extraction scripts or the YAML records, never into compiled outputs.

Was the "raw" data saved in addition to the preprocessed data?

Yes. The verbatim text extracts and the library notes are retained privately as the source of truth, and each record names its note file and, where one exists, its extract file. The raw data is not distributed with the database; the official source URL on each record points to the public statute.

Is the software that was used to preprocess, clean, or label the data available?

The compile and validation scripts are not published. The method they implement is described in this datasheet and in the dataset's PROVENANCE document; the scripts may be released with a future version.

5. Uses

Has the dataset been used for any tasks already?

Yes. It powers the members' web application at laws.aigovcollective.com, where members filter laws by topic, state, status, enforcer, private right of action, and covered role; open a full record per law; find the duties that apply to a given role, topic, and set of states among the 524 typed duties; read how different statutes define the same term across the 378 definitions; compare up to three laws side by side; and open 15 ready-made lists. The application offers no CSV or bulk download, consistent with the Terms of Use. Internally it also runs in a Datasette workbench, and a compiled covered-actors view is regenerated from it each release.

Is there a repository that links to any or all papers or systems that use the dataset?

No.

What (other) tasks could the dataset be used for?

Applicability screening (which laws reach an organization given its role, thresholds, and states); comparative analysis of how statutes define AI, allocate enforcement, or structure penalties; tracking effective and operative dates; and retrieval-augmented question answering by an agent, for which the compile emits Parquet files.

Is there anything about the composition of the dataset or the way it was collected that might impact future uses?

Several things. It is a reference, not legal advice, and legal use should verify against the official source. Scope is statutes only, and named categories are out, so a "no law found" result inside the database is not evidence that no law applies. Editorial fields are classifications, not statutory facts. Confidence flags should travel with any downstream use: a single-sourced field deserves less weight than a verified-verbatim one. Effective is not operative; the two dates are separate fields for a reason. The duties table should be read with the release notes, since the schema cannot yet express per-duty expiry.

Are there tasks for which the dataset should not be used?

It should not be the sole basis for a legal opinion, a compliance certification, or a filing. It should not be used to train a model to generate statutory text, since it holds definitions and scoped descriptions rather than full acts and would teach a model the compression the project works to avoid. Political metadata should not be used to characterize individual legislators beyond what the cited public record states.

6. Distribution

Will the dataset be distributed to third parties outside of the entity on behalf of which it was created?

Yes, to members of the AI Governance Collective. Access is included with membership at the Foundation tier, which every member holds. Non-members see the public landing page, which shows aggregate counts and the release tag. The census subset (identity, dates, topic, status, citation, and official source for all 125 records; no duties, definitions, or analysis) is public on Hugging Face under CC BY 4.0.

How will the dataset be distributed? Does it have a digital object identifier?

Through the web application at https://laws.aigovcollective.com, with sign-in by email link using the address on the member's Collective account (no password). The application provides no file downloads. The public census is distributed separately as CSV and JSON files on Hugging Face, with a citation file. Releases are identified by a numbered, dated tag (v0.8.1-2026-11-08), not by a DOI; no DOI is recorded.

When will the dataset be distributed?

It is available now, at the release this datasheet describes.

Will the dataset be distributed under a copyright or other intellectual property license, or under terms of use?

Compilation © 2026 Dr. David, LLC. The statutory text reproduced in the database is public domain. Member access to the database is governed by the Terms of Use (view, search, cite with attribution, and use in your own organization's compliance work; no bulk download, scraping, redistribution, login sharing, resale, or model training). This datasheet is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and may be shared freely with attribution to Dr. David, LLC. The database remains an educational reference, not legal advice; verify against official sources for legal use.

Have any third parties imposed IP-based or other restrictions on the data associated with the instances?

Enacted statutes are public. Some texts were obtained from mirrors that publish under their own terms; the database carries the statutory words and the official source URL, not the mirror pages, and whether any mirror's terms reach downstream use of the transcriptions has not been assessed.

Do any export controls or other regulatory restrictions apply?

Not applicable.

7. Maintenance

Who will be supporting, hosting, and maintaining the dataset?

The AI Governance Collective, with Dr. David as editor.

How can the owner, curator, or manager of the dataset be contacted?

Through the AI Governance Collective.

Is there an erratum?

Corrections are recorded per release in the dataset's PROVENANCE.md, which lists each audit's findings and the fixes applied, and every correction ships in the next numbered release. A public-facing erratum page separate from that file is not yet determined.

Will the dataset be updated? How often, by whom, and how will updates be communicated?

Yes. Legislative scans run monthly, and each scan that finds new enactments or needed corrections produces a numbered release; eight releases shipped between August and November 2026. Release v0.7.0 was the pass that followed California's September 30, 2026 signing deadline. This release is the pass that followed the October 22 Pennsylvania and October 28 New York signings. The next scheduled pass is January 2027, when the amended texts of California SB 942 and AB 853 swap in. Every page of the application shows the current release tag. Before this release, two independent reviewers fact-checked the batch against the verbatim texts and returned 44 findings, none of them fatal; all were corrected before release. Known limitations carry forward: every California 2026 text is mirrored from LegiScan because the official site blocks automated retrieval, and all seventeen sit in the verification queue for a check against the official host once it is reachable; the New York Assembly tally for Chapter 368 of 2026 and the enrolled text of Pennsylvania's Act 99 of 2026 were not yet available at release and are queued for the same check. Updates add new instruments, amend records when laws are amended, litigated, or take effect, and correct errors found by audit; excluded records are retained rather than deleted. A separate notification channel for members is not yet determined.

If the dataset relates to people, are there applicable limits on the retention of the data?

Not applicable. The only personal data is the public record of officials acting in office.

Will older versions of the dataset continue to be supported, hosted, and maintained?

Every release is a frozen, versioned snapshot kept in an append-only releases folder, so older versions are preserved. The application serves the latest release; whether members will be able to reach earlier releases through the application is not yet determined.

If others want to extend, augment, build on, or contribute to the dataset, is there a mechanism for them to do so?

Not at this release. Corrections and questions are welcome through the Collective, and anything accepted goes through the same adversarial fact-check as the project's own work before it enters a release. A formal process for external contributions is not yet determined.

How to cite this database

AI Governance Collective, US AI Law Database, release v0.8.1-2026-11-08, https://laws.aigovcollective.com, accessed .

Questions and corrections

Send them to the AI Governance Collective. Every correction that survives fact-check is logged in the release notes and shipped in the next numbered release.