New York opens RAISE Act registration for frontier AI labs and launches a safety research centre

The portal is run by the Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust (DIGIT), a new office inside the Department of Financial Services set up to implement the law and oversee large frontier AI developers[1]. Large frontier developers, which TechCrunch says means companies with more than US$500 million in annual revenue such as OpenAI and Anthropic, must register by 1 January 2027[3].

Under DIGIT's published guidance, every frontier developer operating in New York must[2]:

• report qualifying critical safety incidents through the portal within 72 hours, and also disclose them within 24 hours to an appropriate authority, such as law enforcement, if they pose an imminent risk of death or serious injury
• publish a model transparency report before or alongside deploying a new or substantially modified frontier model

Large frontier developers carry extra duties: a public AI safety framework covering catastrophic risk, incident response and security of unreleased model weights, reviewed at least yearly, plus quarterly summaries to DIGIT of catastrophic risk from internal use of their models[2]. Their transparency reports must also summarise catastrophic risk assessments and say how far third-party evaluators were involved[2].

Penalties reach US$1 million for a first violation and US$3 million for later ones, TechCrunch reports[3].

The New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research, based at Binghamton University, will bring together more than 80 researchers to test frontier AI systems using the state's Empire AI computing consortium[1]. Greg Morrisett of Cornell Tech and Jeannette Wing of Columbia University will lead it as interim co-directors[1]. The centre will also work with DIGIT to review the safety frameworks that labs publish and recommend ways to strengthen the requirements[1].

"The stakes are too high to simply take AI companies at their word," Hochul said[1].

The 72-hour incident reporting rule is described by the state as the strongest in the US[1]. With Anthropic heading to its IPO this month and OpenAI also covered, the RAISE Act turns safety frameworks and incident reports from voluntary publications into regulated disclosures, and the governor says she will keep looking for ways to build on the law[1].