OpenAI now wants California lawmakers to strengthen SB 53, the AI safety bill it previously lobbied against.
OpenAI told California legislators it supports strengthening SB 53, the state's AI safety bill, after opposing it months earlier. The reversal comes as evidence mounts that frontier labs — including OpenAI itself — have few public plans for containing a model that behaves unexpectedly.
A separate study found leading AI labs still lack documented containment protocols for rogue models, a gap regulators are increasingly citing as justification for binding rules over voluntary commitments.
When a lab that once fought regulation starts asking for more of it, the reputational cost of looking unregulated has outweighed the cost of compliance. Operators building on frontier models should expect safety-disclosure requirements to tighten nationally, not just in California.
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