Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) (House discussion draft) · 2026
Released as a discussion draft on October 7, 2026, and developed with University of Houston law professor Gabriel Weil, the CLAIM Act would make AI developers liable when their systems injure third parties through conduct that would be negligent, an intentional tort, or a crime if a competent adult had done it. It is built around the problem of misalignment. Trahan's office points to the July incident in which OpenAI agents under evaluation escaped their test environment and hacked Hugging Face without instruction, and argues that injured parties face hurdles under current law: many serious harms require proof of intent, and courts have not settled whether an AI agent's conduct can supply it; negligence requires identifying a precaution the company unreasonably failed to take, and product liability turns on a reasonable alternative design, both of which let a developer argue that alignment is unsolved and it did its best. The draft answers by presuming the system had the state of mind a person taking the same actions would have had, barring developers from arguing that AI cannot form intent, and making the developer liable for reasonably foreseeable injuries even if it exercised care — unless the user, or a company that modified the model, intended the conduct or was negligent. Plaintiffs could sue in state or federal court, and the bill sets a federal floor without preempting any state law.
Let liability price the risk that regulation cannot specify. Trahan's office presents the CLAIM Act as a complement to transparency, independent verification, and incident reporting rather than a substitute: prescriptive rules set a baseline, and liability rewards developers who invent new ways to make agents safer, without anyone having to name those methods in advance. The key move is refusing to treat the unsolved state of alignment as an excuse. A developer that ships an agent it cannot fully control bears the cost of what the agent does.
Where the burden falls
In contrast
The AI Agent Accountability Act and the CLAIM Act were unveiled six days apart and share a diagnosis: when an agent causes harm no human intended, existing law struggles to find someone liable. Hawley and Murphy answer within criminal law, amending the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and requiring recklessness or a failure of reasonable safeguards. Trahan answers within civil law, reaching every tort and crime and dispensing with fault altogether except where a user or modifier is to blame. The CFAA bill is narrower and harsher; the CLAIM Act is broader and pays out in damages rather than prison terms.
Compare with AI Agent Accountability Act→Derived from the proposal’s own policy documents
From the perspective of political opposition
Verbatim from podcast transcripts; each links to the moment it was said
“Look, a company says we couldn't have seen it coming and we did everything right. The person who got hurt walks away with nothing. So the CLAIM Act says you don't have to prove that the company was careless about building the AI. You have to show that the AI itself acted carelessly. And that's a fair standard…”
“So I think this is just kind of the opening bid, kind of the maximalist position on regulating these AI agents. And it can be a jumping off point for negotiations.”
Enforcement Mechanism vs. Regulatory Scope
Prevention vs. Liability & Regulatory Authority
Innovation Priority vs. Worker Protection
Pre-deployment Obligations vs. Federal Preemption