Colorado rewrote its AI law. One part of it is about you.

What just became possible

The law you may have heard about last year is gone. The replacement takes effect January 1, 2027, and for a Denver contractor the exposure is not where you would guess.

September 17, 2026 · 4 min read · Denver, CO

This one is less fun than the rest of this month, but it is local and it has a date on it, and I would rather you hear it early than late.

Colorado passed the country's first broad AI law back in 2024. It was set to take effect this past June. That is not what happened. The legislature replaced it entirely with Senate Bill 26-189, and the new one takes effect January 1, 2027.

The new version is lighter than the original. It is built around disclosure and transparency rather than a general duty of care. But it still applies to businesses using automated systems to make what the law calls consequential decisions, in areas like employment, housing, financial services, insurance and healthcare.

The part that matters for a contractor

Here is the piece I have not seen anybody explain to owners.

Read this twice

The law expressly covers Colorado employees and job applicants. Your customer side is probably fine. You are not using AI to decide who gets a mortgage. Hiring is the exposure.

And hiring is exactly where AI has quietly crept into small businesses over the last two years. If you are using something that screens applicants, scores resumes, ranks candidates or runs an automated first interview, you are in the neighborhood of this law.

Broadly, what the statute asks for is notice before an automated system is used in a consequential decision, and an explanation afterward in plain language when the outcome is adverse, within thirty days, including information about the person's right to meaningful human review.

None of which is exotic. It is close to what a decent employer would want to do anyway.

Two things I want to be clear about

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. The Attorney General still has to write the implementing rules, and details will move between now and then. If you are screening applicants with software, the person to ask is an employment attorney, and it is worth an hour of their time this fall rather than a scramble next December.

The second: the reason to look now is not fear. It is that you have sixteen months, which is a comfortable amount of time to get something right and a very uncomfortable amount of time to discover you got it wrong.

The businesses that handle this well will be the ones that started while it was still boring.

What to do this quarter

1. Write down every tool touching your hiring process. Job boards with matching, resume screeners, scheduling bots, anything that filters or ranks a person.
2. For each one, find out whether a human actually reviews before a candidate is rejected. That is the question that matters most.
3. Book an hour with an employment attorney this fall. Bring the list.
4. Set a reminder for spring 2027 to check what rules the Attorney General published.

Sources SB26-189 Automated Decision-Making Technology · Colorado General Assembly
Colorado Governor Signs SB 189 · Holland & Knight
Impacts and Implications for Employers · Epstein Becker Green
Colorado's New AI Act · Ogletree Deakins

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Ben In Denver · Englewood, CO · The engine is running

People are asking AI who to hire. You can be the answer.

What just became possible

A land grab is underway in local search, and for once it is one that money cannot easily win.

September 14, 2026 · 4 min read · Denver, CO

Something changed in how people find local businesses, and it happened fast enough that most owners have not adjusted.

A real share of your future customers are not going to type "plumber near me" and scroll listings. They are going to ask an assistant, out loud, in the car, in plain language. "My basement is flooding, who should I call in Denver, and are they any good."

And they are going to get an answer. One answer, or three. Not a page of ten links and a map with twenty pins.

Why this is good news for you

I know how that sounds if you have spent years fighting for local search position. But the optimistic case here is real.

Ad spend does not buy your way into that answer the way it buys the top of a results page. What gets a business named is a different set of things. Whether your information is identical everywhere it appears. Whether your reviews are recent, detailed, and sound like actual people describing actual jobs. Whether your website plainly explains what you do, for whom, in which neighborhoods, in what price range. Whether other local sources mention you by name.

Every one of those is available to a nine person company in Aurora. None of them requires a budget. They require being clear and being real, which is what small businesses are naturally better at than national chains.

The fifteen minute version, and I would do it today

Open ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude. Ask the question your customer would ask. "Who is the best furnace repair company in Arvada." Then ask a follow up: "what do people say about them." Do it three or four different ways.

What you are looking for

See if you come up. See what it says about you. See who it names instead of you. That exercise costs nothing and tells you more than most paid reports.

Most owners who try it find the same thing, which is that the answer was assembled from their reviews and from pages on their website they have not touched in three years.

Then fix the most boring thing you found. Nine times out of ten it is that your website never actually says which towns you serve.

This is a land grab, and right now it is one that money cannot easily win. Those do not come along often.

What to do this week

1. Run the fifteen minute test above. Write down what comes back.
2. Put your service areas in plain text on your website, by name, on a page a person would actually find.
3. Check that your name, address, phone and hours are identical on your site, your Google Business Profile, and every directory you are listed in.
4. Ask your next three happy customers for a review that mentions the specific job and the neighborhood. Those are the ones that get quoted back.

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Ben In Denver · Englewood, CO · The engine is running

Post 5 of 8 · Thursday, September 17 · 9:00 AM MT · slug: /colorado-rewrote-its-ai-law

Your phone can answer itself now, and it is good

What just became possible

The oldest problem in home services quietly got solved this year. Most Denver owners have not noticed.

September 10, 2026 · 3 min read · Denver, CO

For as long as I have worked with home services companies, the same problem sits at the top of every list. The phone rings while you are under a sink. That call was worth eight hundred dollars. It is gone.

That problem is now solved.

Why this is not the pitch you turned down two years ago

AI phone agents crossed a line in the last year. Not the robot menus you are picturing. These answer in a normal voice, ask what is going on, look at your actual availability and book the appointment. They do it at nine at night. They do it while you are on the other line. They do it during a hailstorm when forty people call in an hour and your voicemail fills up in twenty minutes.

The old ones followed a script. Ask something the script did not anticipate and the whole thing collapsed. The current generation follows the conversation. A caller can say "my water heater is making a noise and there is a little water underneath, is that an emergency," and the agent can answer that, decide it is urgent, and put them on today's schedule.

The category got competitive fast, which is the part that helps you. There are real options now, they undercut a human answering service by a wide margin, and they connect to the scheduling software you already run.

Two cautions before you go shopping

Start where the downside is zero

Do not put it in front of every call on day one. Start with after hours and overflow, where the alternative is voicemail. You will learn quickly whether it books jobs, and the downside is nothing, because the current outcome for those calls is already nothing.

The second one: listen to the recordings. All of them, for the first two weeks. Every vendor sounds great in a demo. What matters is how yours handles your customers describing your problems in their own words, with a dog barking and a dishwasher running.

If you are missing calls right now, this is the highest return thing available to you this year. Not a campaign. Not a rebrand. Just answering.

What to do this week

1. Pull your call log and count how many rang out unanswered last month. That number is your business case and it usually shocks people.
2. Shortlist two vendors that integrate with the scheduling software you already use. Integration matters more than voice quality.
3. Turn it on for after hours only. Leave business hours alone for now.
4. Block twenty minutes a day for two weeks to listen to recordings.

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Ben In Denver · Englewood, CO · The engine is running