AIKillSwitch.us
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Proposed — not law

Proposed does not mean passed

As of September 24, 2026, H.R. 9917 has been introduced and sent to a House subcommittee. The House has not passed it. The Senate has not passed it. The president has not signed it.

A bill can sit in committee for a long time, or it can move. Until Congress.gov shows that it passed both chambers and became law, no company can be fined under it and Homeland Security cannot issue an order under it.

What is an AI kill switch?

A way to interrupt a powerful AI system — and a bipartisan House bill that would require some companies to keep that ability. H.R. 9917 is proposed legislation, not a statute.

As of September 24, 2026, this bill has not become law.

Is the AI Kill Switch Act law?

No. As of September 24, 2026, H.R. 9917 has been introduced and sent to a House Homeland Security subcommittee. It has not passed either chamber.

Is the AI Kill Switch Act law?

“Introduced” means a member of Congress filed the text. That starts the process. It does not create a duty for any company.

The next recorded step was a referral, on July 24, 2026, to the subcommittee that handles cybersecurity. A referral is a mailbox, not a vote.

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Who could flip it?

If it became law, the Homeland Security Secretary, through the CISA Director, after consulting the Commerce Secretary and the Director of National Intelligence.

Who could flip it?

The order would go to the company, not to a switch in a government building. The Secretary must decide a defined incident happened, and must consult two other officials.

Consulting them is not the same as needing their permission. The bill does not say Commerce or the Director of National Intelligence can veto the order. The company can ask a court to review it afterward. The order does not wait for that review.

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Which companies would have to build one?

Those that offer a covered system to others through an API or hosted service and, with affiliates, took in at least $500 million from that technology last year.

Which companies would have to build one?

Three tests, all of them. The company operates a very large system, offers it to other people through an API or a hosted product, and made at least $500 million from that system last year, counting parent and sibling companies.

“Very large” here means the system was built with computing power that would cost more than $100 million at ordinary U.S. cloud prices. A campus lab, a small app, or a hobby project does not clear that line. The bill does not name OpenAI, Google, or anyone else.

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What would they have to be able to do?

Stop inference, terminate user access, suspend risky accounts or uses, and fully shut the system down. Rules would also consider throttling and rollback.

What would they have to be able to do?

Inference is the moment a trained model produces an answer or takes an action. Stopping inference means that live system stops responding. It is not the same as deleting the research that created the model.

The company would have to be able to do this before any crisis. The government could order it only after a covered incident. A copied set of weights already running on someone else’s computers is a harder problem, and the bill does not solve it by itself.

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What it would do

Require a covered company to be able to stop a covered system, and authorize a proportionate emergency order after a defined incident, with reporting and preserved records.

Who it covers

Large providers of very expensive systems offered to third parties. Not every lab, app, or open-source project. The Secretary could adjust the definitions by rule if the bill passed.

What it would not do

It would not ban AI, cap training, create a crime, or reach every copied set of weights. It is not in force.

How a response would step up

The sponsors describe a path from a slowdown to a full stop. Click a step. Nothing here happens unless the bill becomes law.

Slow it down

The service keeps running, but it answers more slowly or serves fewer people.

Slow it down

The bill tells Homeland Security to consider throttling: a lower inference rate, less user access, or less compute. That is a rule the Secretary would write. It is not automatically the text of an emergency order.

This is the bill’s ladder, not a claim that a software switch can reach every copy of a model. H.R. 9917 also puts the emergency order with a federal department. Other ways of keeping an off switch in human hands are a separate question, and this page does not describe them.

This site explains H.R. 9917, which would let a federal department order the shutdown. It does not argue that government oversight is the only way to keep a human able to stop a system.

Read H.R. 9917 as introduced · Sources for every claim