What Colorado's new AI law counts as covered ADMT

TL;DR

• On May 14, 2026, Colorado Governor Polis signed Senate Bill 26-189, which repeals and replaces the 2024 Colorado AI Act (SB24-205) before it could take effect.
• The new statute drops the term "artificial intelligence" entirely. It regulates "automated decision-making technology" (ADMT) instead.
• A covered ADMT is one that is used to materially influence a consequential decision. The definition turns on function, not on what a vendor labels the tool.
• The statute is codified at Colorado Revised Statutes § 6-1-1701 et seq. and takes effect on January 1, 2027.
• Launch counsel reviewing a Colorado-deployed system needs to classify each model against the ADMT definition before a launch decision, because every other duty in the Act depends on the answer.

SB26-189 repeals and replaces the 2024 Act

The 2024 Colorado AI Act (SB24-205) was the first comprehensive US state AI law. It never took effect. After two years of stakeholder pressure, the 2026 General Assembly passed Senate Bill 26-189, which repeals SB24-205 and reenacts a new framework. The bill's own summary names what it did:

In 2024, the general assembly enacted Senate Bill 24-205, which created consumer protections in interactions with artificial intelligence systems. The act repeals and reenacts those provisions with new requirements regarding the use of automated decision-making technology in consequential decisions.

That sentence matters for counsel building Colorado-launch checklists from the 2024 statute. Those checklists are now stale. The duties that attach are the SB26-189 duties, not the SB24-205 duties.

The definition is the gate

Most of the legal attention is going to the obligations the new Act imposes on developers and deployers. The prior question is which systems those obligations reach. The Act answers with its definition of ADMT, and that definition decides whether the rest of the statute applies to a given launch.

The statute defines ADMT as:

a technology that processes personal data and uses computation to generate output, including predictions, recommendations, classifications, rankings, scores, or other information that is used to make, guide, or assist a decision, judgment, or determination concerning an individual.

A consequential decision is defined narrowly. It is:

a decision that relates to an individual's access to, eligibility for, or compensation related to education, employment, housing, financial or lending services, insurance, health-care services, or essential government services.

A covered ADMT is one that is used to materially influence a consequential decision. That is the threshold question for the rest of the statute. If a system is not covered ADMT, the disclosure duties, the consumer rights, and the developer-to-deployer documentation obligations do not attach.

Function over label

The definition keys on function. The relevant facts are whether the system processes personal data and whether its output, in any of the listed forms, is used to make, guide, or assist a decision concerning an individual. The product name does not control. A tool marketed as decision support can still be covered if a person relies on its output to make a consequential decision. A model marketed as automated can fall outside the definition if it never touches personal data or never feeds the seven-domain list of consequential decisions.

This breaks intuition for launch teams. The classification does not follow the marketing category or the internal project name. It follows two questions only: what data does the system process, and what decision does its output drive. Two systems with similar branding can land on opposite sides of the line, and the line is drawn by use, not description.

A fixed runway

The Act takes effect January 1, 2027. The Colorado Attorney General must adopt implementing rules by that date, including rules clarifying the post-adverse-outcome consumer disclosure required within 30 days of a covered ADMT making an adverse decision. Until the AG rules land, the statutory text is what counsel work from.

The gap between today and January 1, 2027 is the planning window. Teams that inventory and classify their Colorado-deployed systems now have time to build the developer-to-deployer documentation, the at-point-of-interaction notices, and the consumer-rights flow (data access, correction, human review). Teams that wait will be classifying under deadline pressure, which is the worst time to make a definitional call that gates everything downstream.

What this means for AI launch counsel and product legal teams

Classification comes first. Before drafting disclosures, building human-review workflows, or scoping the documentation a developer must hand to deployers, the team needs a defensible answer to whether each system is covered ADMT under SB26-189. That answer determines which of the Act's duties attach.

Two practices make the classification durable. First, document the reasoning for each system: the personal data it processes, the form of output it generates, and the consequential decision its output feeds. A classification with no written basis is hard to defend if the Colorado Attorney General asks under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act enforcement path that the new Act uses. Second, re-run the classification when the system changes. A model that was outside the definition can move inside it when a new data source is added or when its output starts feeding a hiring, lending, or housing decision. That change usually happens through a product update rather than a legal review.

Anteroom tracks this provision in the corpus alongside the other launch-gating rules a product legal team has to clear. The covered-ADMT definition is the one to read first because every other Colorado obligation depends on the answer it produces.

Sources

1. Senate Bill 26-189, Automated Decision-Making Technology (Colorado General Assembly), signed May 14, 2026, effective January 1, 2027. Codified at Colorado Revised Statutes § 6-1-1701 et seq. Retrieved 2026-06-29.
2. Signed Act PDF (Colorado General Assembly), retrieved 2026-06-29.
3. Session Laws, Chapter 131, retrieved 2026-06-29.
4. Anteroom corpus, retrieved 2026-06-29.