California Senator Proposes New AI Safety Bill
California State Senator Scott Wiener has introduced new changes to his AI bill, SB 53, aiming to require major AI companies to share safety procedures and report any safety incidents.
If approved, California would become the first state to enforce significant transparency measures on leading AI firms, potentially impacting companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI.
In the past, Senator Wiener put forth a similar bill, SB 1047, which also included demands for safety reports. However, this bill faced strong opposition from Silicon Valley and was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom. The governor then asked a group of AI experts, including renowned Stanford researcher Fei-Fei Li, to form a committee to outline AI safety goals for the state.
Recently, this AI policy group released their final recommendations, emphasizing the need for companies to share information about their systems to create a more transparent environment. Senator Wiener’s office announced that the new amendments to SB 53 reflect these recommendations.
“This bill is still a work in progress, and I’m eager to collaborate with all parties involved in the upcoming weeks to refine the proposal into a fair and effective law,” Senator Wiener stated.
SB 53 aims to find a middle ground that the previous bill, SB 1047, could not reach. The goal is to ensure transparency among major AI developers while still supporting California’s growing AI sector.
Nathan Calvin, Vice President of State Affairs for the nonprofit AI safety organization Encode, commented, “It’s crucial for companies to explain the safety measures they are taking. This feels like a basic, reasonable step.”
The bill would also provide protections for whistleblowers in AI companies who believe their technology could severely harm society—defined as causing more than 100 deaths or over $1 billion in damages.
Additionally, SB 53 aims to establish CalCompute, a public cloud computing resource to assist startups and researchers working on large-scale AI projects.
In contrast to SB 1047, the new bill does not hold AI model developers accountable for potential damages caused by their AI technologies. It’s also designed to avoid placing burdens on startups and researchers working with AI models.
With the new amendments, SB 53 is now set to be reviewed by the California State Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection. If it gains approval, it will need to pass through additional legislative bodies before reaching the governor.
Meanwhile, across the country, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is contemplating a similar AI safety measure called the RAISE Act, which would also require large AI firms to publish safety reports.
The future of state-level AI regulations, including the RAISE Act and SB 53, were uncertain for a moment, as federal lawmakers considered a proposal to impose a 10-year halt on state AI regulations. Fortunately, this proposal was rejected in a significant Senate vote.
Geoff Ralston, former president of Y Combinator, remarked, “Ensuring the safe development of AI should be a fundamental concern. Congress should lead the way in demanding transparency and accountability from AI companies. But without serious federal action, states must take initiative. California’s SB 53 is a good example of state leadership.”
So far, efforts to align AI companies with mandatory transparency requirements have faced obstacles. While Anthropic has supported calls for increased transparency, companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta have been less cooperative.
Typically, leading AI developers do release safety reports for their models, but this has been inconsistent. For instance, Google delayed a safety report for its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, until months after its launch, and OpenAI also chose not to release a report for its GPT-4.1 model, which raised concerns in later studies.
While SB 53 is a more tempered version of previous bills, it has the potential to compel AI companies to disclose more information than they currently do. All eyes will be on Senator Wiener as he navigates this complex landscape.
