Parents Press Hochul to Preserve New York Responsible AI Law

More than 150 parents delivered a letter on December 12 to Governor Kathy Hochul pressing her to enact the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, known as the RAISE Act, as written. Organized by ParentsTogether Action and the Tech Oversight Project, the coalition described the bill as necessary "minimalist guardrails" and urged the governor to sign it "without changes," warning that proposed revisions would undercut protections for children and other vulnerable users.

The RAISE Act, which passed both the New York State Senate and Assembly in June 2025, would require developers of large artificial intelligence models to produce safety plans and adhere to transparency rules that include reporting safety incidents. Reporting by The Verge identified companies that would fall under the law's scope as Meta, OpenAI, Deepseek and Google, and cast the measure as targeted at developers of high capacity models.

Advocates say the bill establishes baseline obligations intended to prevent and surface harms from AI systems that interact with young people. The parents who signed the letter, the organizers said, included individuals who reported having "lost children to the harms of AI chatbots and social media," a claim that underscores the emotional urgency behind the campaign to keep the statute intact.

The push to secure a signature comes as Governor Hochul reportedly proposed a near total rewrite of the law this week that would make the measure more favorable to technology firms. Those proposed changes have drawn comparisons to amendments made to California's SB 53 after intense industry lobbying, a parallel that alarmed supporters who fear the New York rewrite would exempt or dilute accountability for the largest AI developers.

Industry opposition to portions of the RAISE Act has been well documented, and trade groups and some major companies have lobbied for changes to reporting and compliance requirements. Advocates and lawmakers who backed the bill argue that watering down mandates on safety planning and incident transparency would leave gaps in oversight and reduce state capacity to detect and respond to serious harms to children.

The RAISE Act is one in a suite of technology and child protection bills that cleared the legislature in June and remain unsigned. Separately, lawmakers passed a measure that would require warning labels on social networks about mental health risks, S 4505 A 5346, and other measures addressing child care and health data protections such as S 929 A 2141 have attracted advocacy from groups including the ACLU and childhood safety organizations.

The letter delivered December 12 adds to mounting pressure on the governor to act on multiple enacted measures, and places a spotlight on the balance New York must strike between fostering technological innovation and protecting minors. With the state facing a choice between the law as enacted and a rewritten version shaped by industry priorities, parents and advocacy groups have made clear they view the current text as the minimal safeguard necessary to hold high capacity AI developers to account.