OpenAI calls for stronger AI laws in California

OpenAI, the company that spent much of 2024 fighting California’s AI safety legislation, is now asking the state to write more of it. In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom dated August 12, 2025, the company urged California to implement stricter, more harmonized AI regulations that align with emerging federal and international frameworks. The pivot from opponent to advocate is less contradictory than it sounds. OpenAI isn’t asking for just any regulation. It wants consistent rules that replace the current patchwork of state-level requirements with something more predictable, modeled on standards from the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the EU AI Code of Practice. What OpenAI actually wants The letter to Newsom makes a straightforward case: California is home to the largest concentration of leading AI companies on the planet, so whatever the state decides on regulation effectively becomes the industry baseline. OpenAI argues that baseline should be built around safety-focused rules that don’t vary wildly from what companies already face at the federal or international level. The company supports targeted measures like AI watermarking, which would make it easier to ident...