As part of our AI Assist service, we have an AI-generated similar bills feature. On bill pages there is a tab called Similar Bills. When you click on this tab, for a bill in a 2024 session or later, an AI tool will generate a list of bills that are similar to the bill you are looking at. See this post for more details about the Similar Bills tab.
You can use this feature to quickly find model bills.
It is common for a bill to be drafted in one state, or by a special interest group, and to then be introduced in different states with minor variations. Because these model bills aren't always identical, it can be difficult to make sure you catch them all with a keyword search but the AI is very good at spotting them!
Let's use age verification for pornographic websites as an example. I wrote about the model bill in this blog post, which started in Louisiana in 2022 and has now been introduced across the U.S. If I know that OK SB1959 is a version of this model bill, I can look at the Similar Bills tab and see a number of bills with high scores, showing they are close matches:
While the bill titles may be different, the bill text of all the top 20 or so bills is very similar, showing that they all have their origins in the same model bill. I can now use this in a number of ways:
- I can use the + button next to each bill to add them to a bill sheet. Note: doing this will mean you have a bill sheet with just the current bills which won't be able to identify future bills as they are introduced. You'd need to repeat this process in the future to catch new bills.
- I can sort by the Bill Progress column to identify those bills that have been enacted, or made it out of committee, if I'm only interested in bills with prospects. I can use the Score for each bill to tell me if it's the model bill - above 80 is likely to be the model.
- I can filter the State column to help me identify the bill in a specific state.
- I can click on some of the bills and use the Similar Bills tab on those bills to further help identify good matches.