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119-s-4113119th Congress

AI Guardrails Act of 2026

Sponsored By: Senator Slotkin, Elissa [D-MI]

Introduced

Summary

Limits on AI-driven lethal actions, nuclear control, and domestic targeting. This bill would bar the Department of Defense from using artificial intelligence to launch nuclear weapons, to monitor or target people in the United States without an individualized, articulable legal basis, and to let autonomous weapons use lethal force without appropriate human judgment while providing a narrow waiver route for some systems.

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Bill Overview

Analyzed Economic Effects

2 provisions identified: 1 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.

Limits on Defense Department use of AI

This bill would stop the Defense Department from using AI to execute the launch or detonation of a nuclear weapon. It would bar the Department from using AI to monitor, track, profile, or target people or groups in the United States unless there is an individualized, articulable legal basis, no matter where the data came from. The bill would also prohibit autonomous weapons from using lethal force unless appropriate human judgment and supervision exist. Other AI uses in weapon systems would have to follow Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 (Jan. 25, 2023). The bill would use the National AI Initiative Act definition of "artificial intelligence."

Temporary waivers for weapon AI

This bill would let the Secretary of Defense, acting without delegation, waive the bans on certain autonomous weapon uses for up to one year and renew one additional year. The Secretary would have to certify in writing to congressional defense committees that extraordinary national security circumstances require the waiver and that the system's probability of producing results inconsistent with commander intent does not exceed the documented error rate of trained human operators under equivalent conditions. The Secretary would have to notify Congress within five days after issuing a waiver for formal development, fielding, or any major modification. Each notice would be unclassified with an optional classified annex and must include the rationale, a system description, operational safeguards and training, realistic test results showing the required error-rate comparison, intended timeframe and geography, and the anticipated waiver duration.

Sponsors & CoSponsors

Sponsor

Slotkin, Elissa [D-MI]

MI • D

Cosponsors

There are no cosponsors for this bill.

Roll Call Votes

No roll call votes available for this bill.

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