New York's RAISE Act: registration, 72-hour incident reports

What started

On November 10, New York opened the registration portal for the RAISE Act. The law takes effect on January 1, 2027, and large frontier developers, meaning companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue such as OpenAI and Anthropic, must register by then (TechCrunch). A new office within the Department of Financial Services, DIGIT, will oversee it.

What developers must do

The DFS guidance sets two tiers (NY DFS). All frontier developers must:

• Report critical safety incidents through the RAISE portal within 72 hours.
• If an incident poses an imminent risk of death or serious injury, notify an appropriate authority within 24 hours.
• Publish a transparency report when deploying a new or substantially modified model: release date, languages, output modalities, intended uses and restrictions.

Large frontier developers must also:

• Register and renew a disclosure statement with DFS every two years.
• Publish an AI safety framework covering risk assessment and mitigation, incident response, security of unreleased model weights and internal governance, reviewed at least yearly.
• Send DIGIT a quarterly summary of catastrophic risk from internal use of their models.
• Publish enhanced transparency reports with risk assessment results and the role of third-party evaluators.

Fines reach up to $1 million per violation and $3 million for subsequent ones. The state can also act against companies that fail to register, though a spokesperson declined to give specifics.

An independent evaluation center

Governor Kathy Hochul also launched the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University the same day. It will independently evaluate the safety and security of advanced AI systems and work with DIGIT to review companies' safety frameworks. Hochul first announced it in January with $55 million in donations and capital.

Why it matters

TechCrunch notes New York is the second US state to enact major AI safety legislation, and it covers most frontier labs. For developers the effect is indirect: model releases will come with more regular public transparency reports that spell out intended uses and restrictions. New York's separate chatbot law protecting minors takes effect on June 1, 2027 (New York signs strict AI chatbot law to protect kids).