Volume Nine
Volume Nine and Colorado's AI Act (SB 26-189)
What the law is, in plain terms
Colorado passed Senate Bill 26-189, an update to the state's AI Act. It sets rules for how businesses use AI when that AI plays a meaningful role in big decisions about people.
The "big decisions" the law cares about are a specific list: whether someone gets a job, a loan, an apartment or home, insurance, healthcare, a spot in school, or access to certain government services. The rules take effect for those kinds of decisions starting January 1, 2027.
We read the law closely and looked at how we work. Here's the short version: Volume Nine is a marketing agency, and we don't use AI to make those decisions about people. Where the law comes anywhere near what we do, we already have guardrails in place. Below is a plain-language look at how we operate and why we're confident in where we stand.
The guardrails we keep in place
AI assists our team. People make the decisions.
We use AI for things like research, organizing ideas, summarizing information, and building a rough first draft. A real person on our team shapes, reviews, and approves the work before it goes anywhere. AI never makes the call on its own, and we don't hand strategy or decisions over to a tool.
We work on the marketing side of regulated industries.
Some of our clients are in fields the law focuses on, like healthcare, housing, lending, insurance, and employment. Our job for them is marketing: building awareness, reaching the right audiences, creating content, and reporting on results. We don't decide who qualifies for a loan, who gets hired, who's approved for housing, or who's eligible for care. Those decisions belong to our clients, not to us, and not to any AI we use. We also follow the advertising and marketing laws that already apply to each of those industries.
In healthcare, we don't touch patient data.
Our healthcare work stays on the marketing side. We don't access, process, or make decisions using patient data.
Our hiring stays human-led.
Our applicant tracking system includes AI features, but we don't use them to screen, score, or evaluate candidates. People at Volume Nine read applications and make hiring decisions.
We don't build tools that score or rank individuals.
We don't create or run AI systems that judge specific people, such as lead scoring that decides eligibility, applicant qualification, or approval flags. Our AI use is about reaching audiences, not making determinations about individuals.
When we run ads in sensitive categories, we keep people in control.
Some advertising platforms use automated targeting to help reach the right audiences. When we advertise in sensitive categories like housing, employment, credit, or insurance, we work within the platforms' special rules built to prevent discrimination, and we follow the laws that apply. A member of our team sets up, reviews, and approves how every campaign is targeted. We use these tools to reach people who might be interested, not to decide who is eligible for an opportunity.
We'll align with your preferences.
Comfort levels around AI vary from one client to the next. If you have preferences or corporate policies about how AI is or is not used on your account, tell us and we'll honor them.
People stay accountable.
Even when we use AI, a human at Volume Nine is always responsible for the thinking, the quality, and the final product.
Staying current
The Colorado Attorney General is still writing the detailed rules that sit under SB 26-189, and the law applies to decisions made on or after January 1, 2027. We're keeping an eye on it and will adjust our practices as the rules take shape. If you ever have questions about how we use AI on your account, we're happy to talk it through.