Consumer Recourse

Consumer recourse is the set of rights consumers have to appeal, correct, or contest a decision made or influenced by AI. It includes the right to know that AI was used, the right to an explanation, the right to appeal, and the right to correct personal data that may have affected the decision.

Colorado SB 26-189 gives the idea its most concrete state-law form so far, at section 6-1-1705, and the trigger is automated decision-making technology rather than the “high-risk AI systems” of the law it replaced. From January 1, 2027, a consumer who gets an adverse outcome from a covered ADMT will be able to ask the deployer for two things. One is instructions for obtaining and correcting personal data that was factually incorrect or materially inaccurate. The other is an opportunity for meaningful human review and reconsideration of the decision. Read the limits alongside the rights. The review obligation carries the statute’s own hedge, “to the extent commercially reasonable,” and nothing in the section requires anyone to correct an opinion, a prediction, a score, or a protected evaluation. What a consumer can fix is the input, not the output.

For a licensed carrier the build is smaller than it looks. Underwriting, pricing, and claims models sit inside the practice of insurance, and there the deemed-compliance provision at section 6-1-1708(1)(a) leaves the carrier answering to SB 21-169 instead. Employment systems, vendors, and third-party administrators get no such shelter, and there recourse is a workflow problem rather than a drafting one: escalation paths, notice language, and a data-correction procedure a service representative can actually run.

Consumer recourse is also a governance safeguard. It surfaces problems that monitoring might miss and gives regulators evidence of whether a system is working fairly. See our glossary entries on Colorado SB 26-189, automated decision systems, and human-in-the-loop.