New York Gives Big AI Labs Until 1 January to Register Under RAISE Act

The biggest AI companies now have a deadline in New York. Any frontier AI developer with more than $500 million in yearly revenue must register with the state by 1 January 2027, and from then on it has 72 hours to report a serious safety incident.

The registration portal opened on Tuesday 10 November. The announcement came from the governor’s office, alongside a new state-backed centre for testing AI systems. The rules come from the RAISE Act, a New York law on AI safety and transparency. A new office called DIGIT, which sits inside the state’s financial regulator, will run it.

Who has to sign up

The law covers “frontier models”, meaning the largest AI systems. The regulator’s guidance defines them by how much computing power was used to train them. Any model trained with more than 10^26 operations falls under the law. Only a handful of labs reach that level of computing power today. An AI company counts as a large developer if it and its affiliates earned more than $500 million in the previous calendar year.

These large AI companies must meet four main duties:

• They must register with the state and renew the filing at least every two years.
• They must publish a safety plan that explains how they assess and reduce catastrophic risks and how they protect unreleased models.
• Every three months, they must send the regulator a summary of the catastrophic risks they found when using their own models internally.
• Each time they release a new or substantially changed model, they must publish a transparency report about it.

Smaller AI companies that train models of this size still have to report critical safety incidents and publish transparency reports. If an incident poses an imminent risk of death or serious injury, the guidance says it must be reported to a relevant authority within 24 hours.

Penalties for breaking the rules

Penalties reach up to $1 million for a first violation and $3 million for later ones, according to reporting on the law. The state has not said what happens to a company that simply fails to register.

New York is also setting up the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University. It will bring together more than 80 researchers to test advanced AI systems independently and review the safety frameworks companies publish. The centre is funded by a $30 million philanthropic gift and an initial $25 million from the state university system.

“The stakes are too high to simply take AI companies at their word,” Governor Kathy Hochul said.

Last month, New York also signed a law limiting what chatbots can do with children. This week, Australia announced plans for its own AI safety regulator.

Why it matters: From 1 January, New York law will require the largest AI labs to tell the state’s regulator when something goes badly wrong. The 72-hour clock gives the public a way to learn about serious AI failures that companies might otherwise keep quiet.