With the RAISE Act, New York Aligns With California on Frontier AI Laws
Amid a national debate over AI laws, New York has become the second state to impose new requirements on advanced AI models and the companies that develop them. Instead of contributing to a patchwork of state laws ranging from algorithmic discrimination to child safety that some fear may emerge in the coming months, the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act takes a different path: it harmonizes directly with existing rules.
Overview of the RAISE Act
The RAISE Act, which originated with New York Assemblymember Alex Bores and State Senator Andrew Gounardes, adopts the “trust but verify” paradigm set out by SB-53, the California bill that became the first U.S. frontier AI law last September. Both bills create a core set of transparency requirements, mandating developers to publish frontier AI risk frameworks and report safety incidents to state officials.
Though the bills differ in minor but meaningful ways, their overwhelming convergence matters. The worst fears of those who argued that the federal government had to step in to preempt a coming flood of state AI laws have not borne fruit—at least when it comes to frontier AI rules. Even absent a federal framework, California and New York’s harmonization means that developers are not yet facing the substantial additional compliance burden in frontier AI policy that preemption advocates anticipated.
How the Act Builds on SB-53
The RAISE Act, which will come into effect on January 1, 2027, draws heavily on the “trust but verify” framework of SB-53; in many cases, it directly copies the text of the California law. Most of the legislative findings—which frame the bill’s objectives and provide interpretive guidance about what the legislature believed and intended—are the same. RAISE borrows many of the key definitions from SB-53, including those for catastrophic risk, critical safety incident, and foundation model.
Both laws apply their strictest requirements to AI models trained on more than 10^26 FLOPS and companies with annual gross revenue exceeding $500 million in the previous year. At the heart of both bills is an identical set of transparency requirements for frontier AI development. Like SB-53, RAISE requires companies to publish their approach to safety testing, risk mitigation, incident response, and cybersecurity controls. Companies can choose their methods and standards but must adhere to whatever commitments they’ve made.
They also have to report severe harms caused by AI—primarily those involving death, bodily injury, or major economic damage—along with deceptive model behavior that materially increases catastrophic risk to government officials. Notably, the RAISE Act, like SB-53, requires even models that are deployed only internally to be covered by the frontier AI framework.
Potential for Federal Preemption
The biggest question raised by the new law is whether it will be overtaken by a federal effort to supersede state regulation of AI—whether any such federal rule would closely adhere to the provisions of SB-53 and the RAISE Act or take a different, possibly more laissez-faire approach. The previous administration announced renewed efforts to preempt state AI laws either through federal regulation or congressional action.
Although two attempts to bar state AI regulation failed in Congress last year, some members of Congress have expressed interest in reviving the effort. The White House issued an executive order in December promising federal rules and draft legislation, with parts of SB-53 and RAISE included in the president’s AI Action Plan.
Congressional action appears to be the most likely route for any or all of RAISE to be preempted. Without it, there’s likely to be little the administration can do to block the law. Even without regulatory authority, federal agencies might issue nonbinding guidance on transparency and reporting, which would not preempt state laws but could allow companies to satisfy state requirements by complying with federal standards.
The Future of State Frontier AI Laws
Even if the federal government’s pathway toward a unified framework remains unclear, states may be moving toward an initial consensus on frontier AI policy. Governors of both parties have signaled a desire to regulate AI, with transparency-focused bills introduced in Michigan and Utah. Many observers feared last year that an explosion of state legislation on AI would create a thicket of AI regulations that would stifle American AI development, but that has not yet come to pass.
California and New York face significant questions over how the “trust but verify” framework will be implemented and whether they have the capacity to enforce these laws effectively. It remains unclear what governments are meant to do with company risk reports when they receive them. Neither SB-53 nor the RAISE Act offers a framework for analyzing critical safety incidents or internal deployment reports.
Both laws require state agencies to produce expert reports explaining whether the laws should be updated. Ultimately, whether and how these new laws are enforced will determine if “trust but verify” frameworks create genuine transparency and accountability or become merely symbolic efforts to guide the frontier of AI.
