California State Senator Scott Wiener has broadened his artificial-intelligence measure, Senate Bill 53, to require the state’s largest AI developers to publicly release safety and security protocols and to file incident reports when systems malfunction. The latest amendments, published 9 July, add whistle-blower protections for employees who flag risks that could cause mass harm or exceed US$1 billion in damage and outline penalties to be set by the state attorney general. SB 53 revives elements of Wiener’s earlier bill, SB 1047, which Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed last year after strong opposition from the tech sector. The new draft drops strict liability for model developers and exempts startups that fine-tune existing models, an effort to soothe industry concerns highlighted in recent outreach to firms such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. It also proposes “CalCompute,” a publicly funded cloud resource intended to widen research access to high-performance computing. With the federal government still debating comprehensive AI rules—after the U.S. Senate last week rejected a 10-year freeze on state regulation—California’s push could become a template for other jurisdictions. SB 53 faces its first hearing in the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection; if approved, it must clear additional committees before returning to Newsom’s desk later this year.