On 22 June 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 149, the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (TRAIGA). The bill passed the Texas House on 23 April 2025 and the Senate on 23 May 2025, and was scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2026.
TRAIGA prohibits a defined set of AI uses rather than imposing the broad duty-of-care model adopted by Colorado. It bars developing or deploying AI systems intended to incite or encourage a person to commit self-harm, harm others, or engage in criminal activity (Section 552.052). It prohibits government entities from using AI for social scoring that evaluates people based on social behavior or characteristics in ways that cause detrimental treatment or infringe constitutional rights (Section 552.053), and from using AI to uniquely identify individuals through biometric data scraped from the internet or other public sources without consent where doing so infringes their rights (Section 552.054). It also forbids developing or deploying AI intended to unlawfully discriminate against a protected class (Section 552.056) and producing certain illegal sexual content (Section 552.057). The Texas Attorney General has exclusive enforcement authority and can pursue civil penalties ranging from 10,000 to 200,000 dollars depending on severity.
TRAIGA’s structure resembles the EU AI Act’s list of prohibited practices more than Colorado’s risk-assessment regime, which shows how differently US states are approaching the same problem. For businesses, the contrast underscores that “AI regulation” in the United States is not one rulebook but several, each defining prohibited conduct in its own terms.