Lawmakers sponsoring the two artificial intelligence bills still at play in the 2025 Colorado General Assembly’s special session are working on changes in hopes of a deal that could give the governor the delay on the law he signed last year as well as satisfy tech industry demands for more negotiation.

Senate Bill 4 won approval from the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee on the session’s first day, but it is now stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee while its sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver, continues to negotiate a deal.

The committee canceled its Friday afternoon hearing on SB 4 to allow for more time for negotiations.

The other AI bill is sponsored in the House by Rep. William Lindstedt, D-Broomfield.

Both intend to resolve issues raised with Rodriguez’ 2024 bill, SB 24-205, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law last year but with misgivings, largely raised by the tech industry.

A side-by-side comparison of the introduced versions of both bills to Senate Bill 24-205, provided by the Colorado Independent AI Coalition, shows:

That was Thursday. As of Friday, a lot has changed.

On Thursday, the Senate Business Affairs and Labor Committee, with amendments suggested by Rodriguez, made several changes to the bill, including one that required public entities to respond to requests from consumers about AI decisions to provide that information through an open records request.

One of the bill’s problems is its cost: the original bill estimated costs for the governor’s Office of Information Technology and the Judicial Department at $4.4 million. That’s at a time when lawmakers are working to help cover an almost $800 million general fund hole in the current year’s budget.

After the changes, a new analysis showed costs had actually gone up, to $4.8 million, and it now impacted the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Personnel and Administration.

During Friday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Lindstedt offered a strike-below amendment that stripped his bill of everything but a delay in the implementation of SB 205, which is scheduled to go live on Feb. 1, 2026.

As introduced, HB 8 had a delay to Jan. 1, 2027, but the new delay from his amendment is October 1, 2026.

“We are in a strange place with a bill set to implement in February,” Lindstedt told the committee. The delay would allow the legislature to come back to the issue during the regular session, which would give lawmakers more time to resolve the problems, he explained.

“Doing this in a special session is quite difficult,” he added.

Lindstedt said he initially took a stab at what the framework would look like, and admittedly, it needs more work.

Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, the House sponsor of the Rodriguez bill, had her own amendment at the ready, to delay the implementation to May 1, claiming that a wait until October “gives too much slack.” The amendment failed on a 3-8 vote.

Titone is expected to challenge HB 8 when it reaches the House floor, likely on Saturday. She led the effort in the 2025 session on another implementation delay.

Lindstedt’s amendment was adopted on a 9-2 vote; the bill won an 8-3 vote of approval from the committee and HB 8 now heads to the full House for debate.

The delay is the bare minimum the governor’s office has said they wanted if all else failed.

On the Senate side, sources have said negotiations are focused on allowing a portion of SB 205 to go into effect on the original implementation date of Feb. 1 2026, and the rest would be delayed until sometime after the end of the 2026 legislative session. What’s being negotiated is which portion goes live and what comes later, sources said.