Workforce Bulletin

As we enter 2025, the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) presents both transformative opportunities and pressing legal challenges, particularly in the workplace. Employers must navigate an increasingly complex regulatory landscape to ensure compliance and avoid liability.  With several states proposing AI regulations that would impact hiring practices and other employment decisions, it is critical for employers to stay ahead of these developments.

New York      

New York’s proposed legislation, which if passed would become effective January 1, 2027, provides guardrails to New York employers implementing AI to assist in hiring, promoting, or making other decisions pertaining to employment opportunities.  Unlike New York City Local Law 144, which covers only certain employment decisions, the New York Artificial Intelligence Consumer Protection Act (“NY AICPA”), A 768, takes a risk-based approach to AI regulation, much like that of Colorado’s SB 24-205.  The NY AICPA would specifically regulate all “consequential decisions” made by AI, including those having a “material legal or similarly significant effect” on any “employment or employment opportunity.” The bill imposes compliance obligations on “developers” and “deployers” of high-risk AI decision systems. 

The rise of workplace wearable technology has opened new possibilities for employee efficiencies, safety, and health monitoring. Collecting health-related workplace data, however, may subject employers to liability under nondiscrimination laws.

Yesterday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) published a fact sheet addressing potential concerns and pitfalls employers may run into when gathering and making employment related decisions based on health-related information.

Understanding Workplace Wearables

Wearable technologies, or “wearables,” are digital devices worn on the body that can track movement, collect biometric data, and monitor location. Employers have implemented these tools for a multitude of reasons, including tracking and predicting how long certain tasks take employees to promote efficiency. Wearables may also be programmed to recognize signs of fatigue, like head or body slumps, and notice improper form when lifting, which can be critical for workplace health and safety.

On August 9, 2024, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed HB 3773 into law, amending the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) to expressly regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for employment decisions. HB 3773 is the second Illinois law that regulates workplace AI.  As we previously reported, in August 2019, Illinois enacted the first of its kind statute, the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act (AIVIA), which requires employers who use AI-enabled video interviewing technology to provide applicants advanced notice of the use of the AI, information regarding how the AI works and the characteristics evaluated, and obtain prior consent from applicants. And, while not necessarily directed exclusively at workplace AI tools, as we also previously reported, an employer’s use of AI-powered facial expression and screening technology could also implicate the requirements of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).  

HB 3773 has a potentially broader application than either AIVIA or BIPA.  HB 3773 provides two new definitions:

Artificial Intelligence                      

A machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments.

Artificial intelligence also includes generative artificial intelligence.

Generative Artificial Intelligence   

An automated computing system that, when prompted with human prompts, descriptions, or queries, can produce outputs that simulate human-produced content, including, but not limited to, the following:

On July 20, 2023, U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the “No Robot Bosses Act.”  Other than bringing to mind a catchy title for a dystopic science fiction novel, the bill aims to regulate the use of “automated decision systems” throughout the employment life cycle and, as such, appears broader in scope than the New York City’s Local Law 144 of 2021, about which we have previously written, and which New York City recently began enforcing. Although the text of the proposed federal legislation has not yet been widely circulated, a two-page fact sheet released by the sponsoring Senators outlines the bill’s pertinent provisions regarding an employer’s use of automated decision systems affecting employees and would: