Written by Admin Alex · Fact-Checked by M.Ali · Info Verified September 2026
We review and update this article regularly as new information becomes available.
TL;DR: California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills on September 9 that create the country’s first state-level framework for independent AI auditing. SB 813 sets up verification organizations to check whether AI systems comply with state law. AB 1405 creates an actual registry of certified AI auditors, with rules for independence and transparency. Newsom is now asking the federal government to build something similar nationally.
Somebody has to check the AI industry’s homework, and until this week, nobody in the United States had an official job description for doing it. California just wrote one.
Two bills landed on Governor Newsom’s desk this legislative session and both got signed on September 9. SB 813, authored by Senator Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton, builds the legal framework for independent verification organizations, outside groups empowered to actually assess whether an AI system complies with state law rather than taking a company’s own word for it. AB 1405, from Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda, goes a step further and creates an actual state registry of AI auditors, complete with standards for independence, transparency, and integrity that anyone claiming the title has to meet.
Put simply: one bill defines what counts as a legitimate AI audit. The other creates the credential for who’s allowed to perform one.
Why this builds on last year’s law
This isn’t California’s first swing at AI oversight. Last year’s SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, already required frontier AI labs to disclose certain safety information. SB 813 and AB 1405 fill in a gap that transparency law left open: disclosure only matters if someone independent can actually verify the disclosures are accurate. A frontier lab publishing a safety report is one thing. A certified third-party auditor confirming that report holds up is a meaningfully different level of accountability.
What the bill authors are actually claiming
McNerney didn’t undersell the moment. “Gov. Newsom’s signing of SB 813 sends a clear message that California is taking the lead” on AI safety assessment, he said. Bauer-Kahan made the case for why auditors specifically matter: “third-party auditors are essential to ensuring AI is safe for our communities and critical infrastructure.” Neither quote is subtle about the ambition here, California positioning itself as the state that built the rulebook before Washington got around to it.
Newsom leaned into that framing too, using the signing to call on the federal government to build equivalent protections nationally rather than leaving the entire country dependent on whichever state happens to legislate first.
What’s still unclear
The reporting around these bills doesn’t spell out hard effective dates, or exactly which AI systems fall under mandatory audit requirements versus which ones can opt in voluntarily. Those details will matter enormously once implementation starts. A registry with strict independence standards but no enforcement teeth is a very different outcome than one that actually gates what AI companies can deploy in California without a passing audit.
There’s also the practical question of supply: creating a credential for AI auditors doesn’t automatically produce enough qualified people to fill that role at the scale a state with California’s AI industry footprint would need.
Bottom Line
California didn’t just ask AI companies to be more transparent this time, it built the infrastructure to check whether they’re telling the truth. That’s a meaningfully different kind of law than most state AI legislation so far, and if the auditor registry actually has teeth once it’s implemented, other states, and possibly Congress, will have a template sitting right there to copy.
