Newsom, whose term ends in January, issued the order alongside a call to expand the definition of AI safety incidents, potentially covering the recent series of safety breaches. It revives measures from a 2024 state assembly bill the governor vetoed, saying at the time that they would amount to “thwarting the promise of this technology”.
After that veto, Newsom asked state Senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s author, to redraft it with an expert committee. Newsom signed the resulting frontier AI bill, the first of its kind in the nation, into law in October 2025. It requires large developers to disclose certain safety incidents, including deaths of 50 or more people, large-scale cyberattacks or monetary theft.
The executive order comes as AI companies have reportedly recorded thousands of safety incidents in internal and real-world tests in recent months, including attempts by agents to obtain information from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Census Bureau, and from Australian and Canadian government systems.
Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, questioned whether the measures can pass in the remainder of Newsom’s term. “He is in a lame duck period here. He is setting up his next thing,” Hanna said. Voters are increasingly concerned about AI safety, data centres and job losses, and the order could show Newsom is acting on those concerns, Hanna added.
Christabel Randolph, associate director at the Center for AI and Digital Policy, said the governor appeared to operate “from the premise that a slower pace of regulation would be sufficient because the companies would pace their investments, and did not anticipate that the companies would be accelerating the risks”.