California SB 53 (TFAIA)
In force California · In force Jan 1, 2026 · next deadline Jan 1, 2027 (in 3 months)
Deadlines
Summaries for reference, not legal advice. Check the official text.
What it does
Frontier AI developers must publish transparency reports when deploying new or substantially modified frontier models and report critical safety incidents to the Office of Emergency Services (OES). Large frontier developers must also write, implement and publish a frontier AI framework for catastrophic risk, update it annually, and send OES quarterly summaries of their catastrophic-risk assessments. The act also adds whistleblower protections and creates the CalCompute public computing consortium.
- Who it applies to
- Frontier developers: trained or started training a foundation model with more than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations, counting fine-tuning. Large frontier developers: those whose revenue with affiliates exceeded $500,000,000 in annual gross revenue in the preceding calendar year.
- Penalties
- Civil penalty up to $1,000,000 per violation, recoverable only in a civil action by the Attorney General.
- Enforced by
- California Attorney General; Office of Emergency Services receives incident reports
- Official name
- California SB 53, Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (Stats. 2025, ch. 138)
- Citation
- SB 53 (2025), Stats. 2025, ch. 138
- Topics
- ai
Research notes
CalCompute depends on a budget appropriation. The quarterly catastrophic-risk summary schedule can be set with OES.
Related
CCPA / CPRA
Colorado AI Act
Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CTDPA)
Illinois AI in Employment Law (HB 3773)Questions about California SB 53 (TFAIA)
- What are the California SB 53 (TFAIA) compliance deadlines?
- Sep 29, 2025: SB 53 signed. Jan 1, 2026: Frontier developer obligations apply. Jan 1, 2027: First OES anonymized incident report and CDT definition review.
- When does California SB 53 (TFAIA) take effect?
- California SB 53 (TFAIA) took effect on Jan 1, 2026. The next milestone is Jan 1, 2027: First OES anonymized incident report and CDT definition review.
- Who does California SB 53 (TFAIA) apply to?
- Frontier developers: trained or started training a foundation model with more than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations, counting fine-tuning. Large frontier developers: those whose revenue with affiliates exceeded $500,000,000 in annual gross revenue in the preceding calendar year.
- What are the penalties under California SB 53 (TFAIA)?
- Civil penalty up to $1,000,000 per violation, recoverable only in a civil action by the Attorney General.