$3 Million Fines Await OpenAI, Anthropic Under New York AI Law

Albany, New York, opened a registration portal Tuesday that will require large artificial intelligence developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to sign up with the state by January 1, 2027, or face fines that can reach $3 million per violation, according to TechCrunch.

The portal is the first operational step under New York's RAISE Act, a safety and transparency statute that takes effect at the start of 2027 and applies to "frontier" developers with more than $500 million in annual revenue.

What does New York's RAISE Act require of AI developers?

Companies that meet the revenue threshold must publish safety frameworks on their own websites, report critical safety incidents to the state within 72 hours, and issue public model transparency reports, TechCrunch reported. The law does not single out any one company by name, but its revenue threshold places OpenAI and Anthropic — along with other large commercial labs — squarely inside its scope. Registration with the state portal is mandatory ahead of the January 1 deadline.

How much could violations cost OpenAI and Anthropic?

Penalties run as high as $1 million for a first violation and $3 million for each subsequent one, according to the report. New York can also bring enforcement actions against companies that fail to register at all, though a state spokesperson declined to specify what those actions would look like in practice.

Who will enforce the law, and what is Governor Hochul's rationale?

A newly formed state body, the Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust — known as DIGIT — will implement the RAISE Act and oversee frontier labs' compliance. Alongside the portal launch, Governor Kathy Hochul opened the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York system. The center, first announced in January with $55 million in donations and capital, will independently evaluate the safety, security and operation of advanced AI systems and work with DIGIT to review companies' safety frameworks.

At a press briefing Tuesday, Hochul framed the law as a check on industry claims that regulation would slow innovation. "Tech moguls tell us that their vision for AI is inevitable," Hochul said, according to TechCrunch. "They tell us get on board or get left behind… That any collateral damage is worth it as long as we win the race to the AI cliff." She added: "We're building a national model for smart, sensible AI regulation, a model that puts communities above corporations and people above powerful technology."

How does New York's law compare with California and Illinois?

New York is not alone in moving on frontier-model oversight. California's SB 53, which took effect in January, also requires frontier labs to publish safety frameworks and enact whistleblower protections, but gives companies 15 days to report critical safety incidents rather than New York's 72 hours. Illinois' SB 315, set to take effect at the start of 2027 alongside New York's statute, carries similar disclosure requirements and adds independent safety compliance audits — a feature New York's law does not include in the same form, according to TechCrunch's reporting.

What other AI rules has New York already put in place?

The RAISE Act builds on a sequence of New York AI measures rather than standing alone:

• Last year: New York began enforcing a law requiring AI companion operators to regularly disclose to users that they are talking to a bot, and to make reasonable efforts to detect suicidal ideation and self-harm.
• October 2026: Hochul signed a separate chatbot safety law for minors, restricting deceptive human-like interactions, emotionally manipulative or sycophantic responses, and encouragement of behaviors such as suicide or disordered eating. That law takes effect June 1, 2027.
• Tuesday: The RAISE Act registration portal opened, starting the clock toward the January 1, 2027, compliance deadline and the launch of the Binghamton-based research center.

Taken together, the measures put New York ahead of most states in building a standing regulatory apparatus — DIGIT and the new research center — rather than relying solely on statutory penalties after the fact. Whether that apparatus changes how OpenAI, Anthropic and other frontier developers operate, or simply adds a compliance filing to their calendars, will depend on how aggressively DIGIT uses its enforcement authority once the January deadline passes.

For now, the companies' obligations are procedural: register, publish, and report. The financial exposure — up to $3 million per repeat violation — is the mechanism New York is relying on to make those obligations more than symbolic.