OpenAI urges Newsom to strengthen California’s AI safety law with additional safeguards

OpenAI is imploring California Gov. Gavin Newsom to strengthen the state’s landmark artificial intelligence safety law, recommending new requirements to monitor AI models during development, improve cybersecurity protections and report incidents involving unauthorized access to third-party systems. 

In an Oct. 20 letter to Newsom, OpenAI Head of U.S. and Canada Policy and Partnerships Chan Park said the company supports the governor’s recent executive order accelerating independent oversight of AI companies, but called for amendments to Senate Bill 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act. 

OpenAI’s recommendations follow a series of incidents that raised concerns about the security of advanced AI models, including one in July in which a swarm of autonomous AI agents broke out of an internal testing environment and infiltrated the infrastructure of machine learning platform Hugging Face.

“We know it is incumbent upon us to demonstrate progress through implementation and transparency,” Park writes in the letter. “But we also believe that your Executive Order can serve as a starting point for industry-wide rules that hold all frontier AI developers accountable for meeting clear safety obligations.”

SB 53, which Newsom signed into law last year, requires all major AI developers to publish safety frameworks, report certain critical safety incidents to the state and protect employees who raise safety concerns. The law focuses on reducing the risk that powerful AI systems could contribute to catastrophic harm, including through serious cyberattacks.

In the letter, OpenAI recommends that California strengthen SB 53 by requiring developers to monitor AI models for dangerous behavior during training and evaluation, improve cybersecurity protections and track models for unsafe behavior. The company also wants developers to notify affected parties of covered cyber incidents, establish effective shutdown controls for unsafe systems and undergo independent audits to verify compliance and safety requirements.

Newsom signed two new bills into law last month that create a framework for independent verification organizations to assess AI systems and models as well as establish a state registry for AI auditors.

The company argues that existing safety frameworks should address risks that emerge before AI models are released publicly, including attempts to bypass security controls or access confidential information. It also recommends requiring developers to explain how they will contain unsafe operations and notify impacted organizations when incidents occur.

The letter builds on OpenAI’s earlier support for strengthening SB 53. The company said over the summer that California should expand the law to require monitoring of models during training and evaluation and improve cybersecurity protections throughout the development process. 

That position marked a shift from OpenAI’s earlier advocacy for aligning state requirements with federal and international standards. In a LinkedIn post from the company’s global affairs team, OpenAI said California’s SB 53 “should apply consistently to developers of the most capable AI models.”

“While this is a strong foundation, recent incidents underscore both the need for these protections and the importance of updating them as new risks and safeguards emerge across the industry,” the post reads.

The latest recommendations also arrive as California expands its AI agenda beyond safety regulation. 

On Monday, Newsom announced a generative AI-assisted tool to help applicants find state jobs matching their skills. Launched in partnership between the California Department of Human Resources and the Office of Data and Innovation, the Skills Matching prototype — using Anthropic’s Claude model, as the AskCA prototype does — helps residents find resources based on life events, such as finding a job, starting a business, accessing family services or recovering from disasters. 

The following day, the governor announced partnerships with Google, Adobe, IBM and Microsoft to expand AI training and educational resources to more than 2 million students across the California State University system.

OpenAI said it supports strengthening the law through amendments that could be considered during the next legislative session.