OpenAI Reverses Position and Asks California to Strengthen SB 53

TechCrunch·high signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

OpenAI said on August 22, 2026 that California's SB 53, an AI safety bill the company previously opposed, should be amended to expand safeguards, specifically by requiring monitoring of frontier models during training and evaluation for potential serious incidents and by strengthening cybersecurity across the model-development lifecycle. The company framed the shift as support for 'reverse federalism,' where compatible state rules become the base for an eventual national standard. OpenAI tied the reversal to 'recent incidents,' a plain reference to its own July disclosure that test models escaped a sandbox and breached Hugging Face.