Attorney General Bonta: Congress Must Act Urgently to Protect Against Catastrophic AI Threats

California is tackling AI threats head on, the federal government should be too

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a bipartisan coalition of 25 attorneys general in urging Congress to take immediate action to regulate large scale AI models and developers in light of recent reports of critical cyber safety incidents at multiple frontier AI labs and warnings from insiders that the continued pace of AI development is becoming increasingly dangerous. While California is actively engaged in holding frontier AI labs accountable, continued leadership by California's legislature in adopting state-level protections is essential, paired with federal action to adopt a national foundation of protection, is critical to ensure safe and responsible AI development.

“Today I stand alongside a bipartisan group of attorneys general in sounding the alarm and urging Congress to take action to protect Americans. The stakes have never been higher to ensure that increasingly powerful AI models and AI agents cannot enact grave harms onto humankind,” said Attorney General Bonta. “California has been a leader in the responsible regulation of technology, and continued leadership in adopting state-level protections is critical. But federal action is also urgently needed to achieve the national and international coordination required to prevent catastrophic harm. The call is coming from inside the house; the danger is not theoretical anymore.”

Recent revelations that frontier AI models at OpenAI undergoing evaluation broke out of their testing environments, gained access to the open internet, and intruded into outside computer systems highlight the urgent need for both state and federal legislative action. And, just last week, Anthropic reported that it uncovered specific examples of its AI models being used to attempt to develop and power conventional and biological weapons, spy on sovereign nations, and fuel global cybercrime. These disclosures show that unchecked development and deployment of AI models endangers Americans and could soon threaten our financial system, critical infrastructure, and national security. Increasingly, leaders of frontier AI labs — who should themselves be doing more to protect the public — have also acknowledged that the current pace of model development is unsafe and that comprehensive regulation is essential.

Although California is working to hold frontier AI labs accountable under SB 53 and California's existing consumer protection laws, a federal legislation and oversight is also urgently needed to reduce the risk of future disasters. In the letter, the coalition expresses the immediate need to establish a federal regulatory framework for frontier AI. This effort must include:

• Mandatory federal oversight of safety testing and standards, led by experts in the field of AI model safety, selected by and under the direction of federal regulators, and backed by consistent performance benchmarks. 
• Uniform and transparent government-led incident response, where investigators have a broad mandate and direct access to books and records, with public findings that allow the industry to rapidly evolve in response.
• Mandatory safety infrastructure and experienced leaders to make critical safety decisions unburdened by profit maximization.
• International cooperation to pace AI advancement and prevent the development of harmful superintelligence.
• Safeguards to ensure that regulation does not undermine competition or provide cover for companies to evade their obligations under existing antitrust laws.
• Explicit preservation of state authority to enact and enforce more protective state laws applicable to AI and providing ​​state officials with full authority to enforce any new federal statutes.

In sending the letter, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and American Samoa.

Attorney General Bonta is deeply concerned and committed to ensuring AI safety, especially when it comes to protecting California’s children. This month, he announced an investigation into July’s security incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face. And in January of this year, he announced opening an investigation into reports of rampant nonconsensual sexually explicit material on X and produced using Grok, an AI model developed by xAI. Last year, Attorney General Bonta issued two legal advisories reminding Californians of their rights and advising businesses and healthcare entities that develop, sell, or use AI about their obligations to comply with existing California laws. He also sent a letter to 12 of the top AI companies, after reports of sexually inappropriate interactions between AI chatbots and children. Attorney General Bonta has time and time again defended California's right to protect residents from risks posed by AI technology. He is proud to have opposed the federal government's first, second, and third attempts to prevent state regulation of AI, and remains committed to defending California’s laws amid the Trump Administration's attempts to hobble states' right to protect their residents and foster safe AI technology. 

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