AI Accountability Takes Center Stage as New York Approves RAISE Act

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The New York State Senate has passed a bill that would require the most prominent generative AI companies to publish safety reports and inform consumers of security incidents. The bill, known as the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, or RAISE Act, will be presented to New York Governor Kathy Hochul for a final decision or a request for revisions. 

RAISE Act applies to large AI companies

If signed into law, the bill would require large AI companies to: 

• Publish thorough safety and security reports on advanced models.
• Report safety incidents, which could include scenarios such as breaches by external threat actors or alarming behavior from the models themselves.
• Implement safeguards to prevent risk.
• Refrain from deploying frontier models if they could cause “an unreasonable risk of critical harm.”
• Conduct third-party audits to ensure compliance with the act.

The act empowers the New York State Attorney General to impose civil penalties of up to $30 million against companies that violate the act. 

The bill defines large generative AI companies as those that spent over $100 million on cloud computing resources. 

The act attempts to balance safety and innovation

Co-sponsor Senator Andrew Gounardes said the law was designed to allow innovation while maintaining safeguards. 

“My RAISE Act ensures AI can flourish while requiring the largest companies to have a safety plan so their products aren’t used to hurt people,” Gournardes said in a statement issued on June 12. “It’s exactly the type of reasonable, commonsense safeguard we’d expect of any company working on a potentially dangerous product, and it ensures no one has an incentive to cut corners or put profits over safety.”  

Critics of laws like this — such as the high-profile California AI safety bill, which the state’s governor vetoed in September 2024 — argue that such measures could harm innovation or fail to account for context, including the deployment of generative AI from smaller companies in high-risk scenarios. 

New York becomes the first state to require companies to disclose when AI is responsible for layoffs

The RAISE Act isn’t the only recent AI legislation in New York. In June, New York became the first state to require companies to disclose whether layoffs were due to AI. 

The update affects the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) system, which mandates advance notice for large-scale layoffs. The new version includes a checkbox for employers to indicate whether automation or technological innovation contributed to the decision. If selected, companies must provide further details identifying the specific technology — such as AI tools or platforms — involved in the workforce reduction. 

The post-pandemic years of 2023 and beyond have seen a trend of mass layoffs and buyout programs among tech companies. Factors include a surge in consumer interest during the pandemic, economic uncertainty, and, indeed, the rise of AI and automation. In April 2025, Microsoft said 30% of the code in its internal repositories is generated by AI tools. 

Read eWeek’s coverage of the proposed U.S. bill to ban state-level AI regulation, which could override New York’s efforts to independently govern artificial intelligence.