New York opens AI registration portal as $3 million fines loom under new law

Two days after a report found that Anthropic’s AI research is moving twice as fast as it was a year ago, as reported earlier, New York moved to put guardrails around the companies building that technology. On November 10, the state opened an online portal requiring large AI developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to register with regulators.

The portal is the first concrete step toward enforcing the RAISE Act, New York’s AI safety and transparency law, which takes full effect at the start of 2027. The law applies to frontier developers with more than $500 million in annual revenue and sets a January 1, 2027 deadline for them to register. Once in effect, covered companies must publish safety frameworks on their own websites, report critical safety incidents to the state within 72 hours, and issue public transparency reports describing their models.

A newly created state office, the Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust, known as DIGIT, will run the registration system and oversee frontier labs under the law. Companies that violate the RAISE Act face fines of up to $1 million for a first offense and $3 million for each violation after that. New York can also take enforcement action against developers that skip registration entirely, though a state spokesperson would not say what that might look like in practice.

Governor Kathy Hochul tied the rollout to a broader pushback on the industry’s pace. “Tech moguls tell us that their vision for AI is inevitable,” she said at a press briefing on November 10, arguing that executives dismiss any harm as worth it in what she called “the race to the AI cliff.”

Hochul also opened the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research, housed at Binghamton University within the State University of New York system. The center, first announced in January with $55 million in donations and capital, will evaluate the safety and operation of advanced AI systems independently and work alongside DIGIT to review companies’ safety disclosures. “We’re building a national model for smart, sensible AI regulation, a model that puts communities above corporations and people above powerful technology,” Hochul said.

The RAISE Act joins two other New York AI laws: one already in force requiring companion-bot operators to disclose that users are talking to a bot and to watch for signs of self-harm, and a chatbot law for minors that Hochul signed in October, which takes effect June 1, 2027.

What this means

New York’s approach now sits alongside California’s SB 53, in effect since January, which gives frontier labs 15 days to report safety incidents, and Illinois’ SB 315, due in 2027, which adds independent compliance audits. The RAISE Act’s 72-hour reporting window is tighter than California’s, suggesting states are not converging on one standard but racing ahead with their own.

What stays unclear is how New York will actually police companies that simply ignore the registration deadline. The state’s own spokesperson declined to describe what an enforcement action against a no-show developer would look like, leaving the law’s teeth untested until January 2027 arrives.

Whether OpenAI, Anthropic, and other frontier developers register on time, or contest the law’s reach, will be the first real test of whether DIGIT’s oversight has any bite.