New York's AI Safety Law Opens Registration: OpenAI and Anthropic Must Sign Up by January

New York opened its RAISE Act registration portal on Tuesday, giving large frontier AI developers until January 1, 2027 to register or face enforcement action. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic with more than $500 million in annual revenue must now publish safety frameworks on their websites, report critical safety incidents within 72 hours, and issue public model transparency reports, according to TechCrunch.

Governor Kathy Hochul, speaking at a press briefing, pushed back against industry rhetoric: "Tech moguls tell us that their vision for AI is inevitable. They tell us get on board or get left behind. That any collateral damage is worth it as long as we win the race to the AI cliff."

The Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act — described by ¹ as one of the country's most significant AI safety laws — mandates several requirements for large frontier developers:

The newly formed Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust (DIGIT) will enforce the RAISE Act and oversee large frontier AI labs. The state can bring enforcement actions against companies that fail to register, though ¹ on what those actions would look like.

Hochul also launched the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at SUNY Binghamton, funded with $55 million in donations and capital. The center will independently evaluate the safety, security, and operation of advanced AI systems and work alongside DIGIT to review companies' safety frameworks.

"We're building a national model for smart, sensible AI regulation, a model that puts communities above corporations and people above powerful technology," Hochul said, according to TechCrunch.

The RAISE Act joins two other AI safety laws already in effect in New York. A companion AI law requires operators to regularly inform users they're talking to a bot and make reasonable efforts to detect suicidal ideation and self‑harm. In October, Hochul signed a chatbot safety law for minors that restricts deceptive human‑like interactions, emotionally manipulative responses, and encouragement of dangerous behaviors,.¹

New York isn't alone. Illinois' SB 315, which also takes effect at the start of 2027, has similar requirements plus adds independent safety compliance audits. Together, these states are building a patchwork of AI oversight that effectively sets a de facto national standard for frontier model developers.

For developers building on frontier APIs, the RAISE Act doesn't directly impose requirements — it targets the model developers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others above $500M in revenue), not downstream builders. But the ripple effects are real.

Safety frameworks must be published publicly, which means developers will have new visibility into how frontier labs think about risk. Incident reporting within 72 hours means builders will learn about model failures faster — but those reports may also trigger API changes or model restrictions with short notice. The $55 million research center at SUNY Binghamton could produce independent model evaluations that inform procurement and deployment decisions, supplementing the vendor‑supplied benchmarks developers currently rely on.

The Illinois requirement for independent audits goes further than New York's framework and could become the template other states follow. Developers integrating frontier models into production systems should monitor whether their model providers register with DIGIT by the January deadline — companies that miss it face enforcement action that could disrupt API access.