OpenAI is urging California, a trendsetter in US regulation, to align its AI rules with existing national or international frameworks, including the EU’s, to avoid conflicting regulations across the country.
The EU passed its AI Act last year and introduced a voluntary Code of Practice for providers of large AI models, a non-binding framework signed by almost all major US and European companies, including OpenAI.
In a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, OpenAI said the state should treat AI companies as compliant with its own rules if they have signed up to the EU’s code, or if they work with the US’s federal AI Centre.
In the letter, OpenAI’s chief lobbyist Christopher Lehane recommended policies “that avoid duplication and inconsistencies” with those of similar democratic regimes.
In a blog post accompanying the letter, the company warned the US must choose between setting clear national standards for AI and “a patchwork of state rules”, adding: “Imagine how hard it would have been to win the Space Race if California’s aerospace and tech industries had been tangled in state-by-state regulations”.
At a US Senate hearing in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said having 50 different regulatory regimes would be “quite bad” and warned that adopting the EU’s approach to AI regulation would be “disastrous”, instead calling for a “light touch” federal approach.
California, the most populous and wealthiest US state, often seeks to set an example for others through its regulation. But tensions over AI rules between Washington and state capitals have been brewing for some time.
At the start of July, the US Senate scrapped a decade-long ban on state-level AI laws from President Donald Trump’s broad budget bill.
Weeks later, the Trump administration published an AI Action Plan seeking to block federal funding for AI in states with “burdensome AI regulations”.
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