OpenAI may have violated California’s AI safety law with latest model releases, AI watchdog says

An AI industry watchdog is accusing OpenAI of violating California’s AI safety law multiple times in the past year, including with the release of its latest model, Astra.

A new analysis from the Midas Project—a nonprofit that describes itself as a watchdog “working to ensure that AI benefits everybody, not just the companies developing it”—alleges that OpenAI has broken California’s newly-enacted AI safety law at least three times this year.

The allegations concern OpenAI’s failure to publish a required risk assessment for the very danger the company has lately been sounding alarms about: AI systems slipping out of human control.

California’s Transparency in Frontier AI Act, often referred to as SB 53 (the state senate bill number it had before passage), was signed into law in September 2025 and took effect at the start of this year.

It requires the largest AI developers to publish safety frameworks explaining how they evaluate and mitigate AI risks—and specifies that the companies must then adhere to their own policies.

In May, OpenAI published its Frontier Governance Framework (FBF), the policy document the new law requires.

It says that the company will assess each new model on four categories of risk and assign them a “risk tier,” ranging from one to three, in each category.

For each risk tier, there are then different mitigations the company has committed to taking.

The categories are: Cyber offense; Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN); Harmful manipulation; and Loss of Control.

“California’s SB 53 requires AI companies to adopt these safety policies and to follow them,” Tyler Johnston, the founder of the Midas Project, told Fortune .

“It’s totally up to them to choose what the rules are.

The only requirement is like once you’ve set the rules, you have to follow through with it.” OpenAI tells Fortune it is “confident” in its compliance with SB 53.

“We invest heavily in evaluating emerging risks and developing safeguards, publicly sharing findings through our system cards and safety frameworks,” a company spokesperson said.

CEO Sam Altman also called for federal regulation and government support in coordinating an international slowdown treaty for AI development with China a Sept.