Via gizmodo.com
The company wants the state to align its patchwork of AI rules with federal and international standards, arguing California is uniquely positioned to set the tone for safety regulation.
OpenAI, the company that spent much of 2024 fighting California’s AI safety legislation, is now asking the state to write more of it. In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom dated August 12, 2025, the company urged California to implement stricter, more harmonized AI regulations that align with emerging federal and international frameworks.
The pivot from opponent to advocate is less contradictory than it sounds. OpenAI isn’t asking for just any regulation. It wants consistent rules that replace the current patchwork of state-level requirements with something more predictable, modeled on standards from the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the EU AI Code of Practice.
What OpenAI actually wants #
The letter to Newsom makes a straightforward case: California is home to the largest concentration of leading AI companies on the planet, so whatever the state decides on regulation effectively becomes the industry baseline. OpenAI argues that baseline should be built around safety-focused rules that don’t vary wildly from what companies already face at the federal or international level.
The company supports targeted measures like AI watermarking, which would make it easier to identify AI-generated content. It also backs transparency requirements along the lines of SB 53, a bill signed in 2025 that has helped establish California as a national leader in AI disclosure rules.
But OpenAI draws the line at what it considers overly burdensome provisions. Early safety testing mandates, for instance, have drawn the company’s concern that they could slow development without meaningfully improving outcomes.
The child safety angle #
One area where OpenAI has put its weight behind stronger rules is child protection. In January 2026, OpenAI and Common Sense Media merged their separate ballot initiatives into a single measure called the Parents & Kids Safe AI Act, focused specifically on protecting minors from AI-related harms.
Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s VP of global policy, emphasized in remarks from August 2026 that state policymaking is crucial to US AI governance and that California’s leadership in transparency laws offers an opportunity to address significant issues like catastrophic risk and child safety. She noted that US AI policy is chiefly being made in state capitals rather than in Washington, making California’s choices disproportionately important.
Why the change of heart #
California has enacted multiple AI-related measures since 2023, and the regulatory momentum shows no signs of slowing. For OpenAI, the question isn’t whether California will regulate AI. It’s whether those regulations will be coherent or chaotic.
A fragmented regulatory environment creates real costs. Companies operating across states and borders have to build separate compliance programs for each jurisdiction, which eats into margins and diverts engineering resources from product development. A harmonized framework, even a strict one, can actually be cheaper to navigate than a loose collection of inconsistent rules.
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