OpenAI Public Policy Agenda

Mission and Principles

OpenAI states that its mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity, guided by five core principles that shape how it builds AI and engages in public policy. The principles are: democratization, empowerment, universal prosperity, resilience, and adaptability. OpenAI believes AI can reshape work, learning, creation, and societal participation, and that democracies play an essential role in broadening access, mitigating risks, and giving people agency over the AI future they want. To reflect this commitment, OpenAI notes that its user base includes as many women as men, more users both under and over age 30 than any other AI platform, and more users earning under $100,000 than over $100,000, mirroring the broader global workforce.

Policy Priorities

OpenAI’s policy priorities translate its mission and principles into concrete areas where it actively engages with governments and civil society: safety, youth safety, AI resilience (covering education, workforce, and deepfakes), and AI infrastructure and energy. These priorities aim to help governments respond to AI’s opportunities and challenges, mitigate risks, expand access to opportunity, and ensure meaningful participation in the AI economy while advancing the mission that AGI benefits all of humanity. OpenAI notes that the list is not exhaustive and will evolve as AI evolves.

Safety

OpenAI supports state and federal frontier AI safety frameworks, cybersecurity measures, and international standards to address risks from advanced general‑purpose AI models. In the United States, it backs state efforts such as California SB 53, the New York RAISE Act, and Illinois SB 315, which emphasize transparency, public reporting on catastrophic‑risk evaluations and safety incidents, whistleblower protections, and enforceable accountability for developers that fail to meet safety responsibilities. OpenAI also supports Congressional action to create a comprehensive federal framework that leverages the emerging consensus from state laws, strengthens the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) as the primary federal institution for frontier AI safety, and mobilizes a broader resilience plan across government to address national security and public safety challenges. This framework should require CAISI to evaluate the most capable frontier models, create an independent assessment ecosystem, and prioritize monitoring progress toward recursive self‑improvement. With a federal framework in place, OpenAI supports the preemption of state laws that regulate the same frontier safety risks. OpenAI also backs the U.S. federal government’s role in setting common international standards, noting it was the first U.S. company to sign the EU AI Act Code of Practice and among the first to enter voluntary agreements with both the U.S. CAISI and the UK AI Security Institute (UK AISI). Looking ahead, OpenAI believes policymakers should consider more ambitious ideas such as model containment playbooks, incident reporting, and international governance bodies for frontier AI risks. On cybersecurity, OpenAI supports policies that expand trusted access to AI‑powered cyber defense tools, strengthen partnerships among governments, researchers, and industry for evaluations and information‑sharing, build resilience measures, and modernize outdated public‑sector cybersecurity systems, including partnerships with U.S. federal, state, local, and international partners.

Youth Safety

OpenAI advocates for enforceable, risk‑based regulations that protect minors from AI harms while preserving access to beneficial AI. It believes teens should have access to safe and trustworthy AI at home, school, and as they prepare to join the workforce, and should be protected from potential harms. OpenAI supports requirements for privacy‑preserving age assurance so companies can identify minor users and apply age‑appropriate protections; regular youth safety risk assessments that identify foreseeable risks and drive proportionate safeguards before harm occurs; accessible parental controls that help families guide and support teens’ experiences; and clear public youth safety policies that explain protections and how they evolve over time. Safeguards should address harmful or age‑inappropriate content, include clear protocols for responding to serious safety situations, and protect against manipulative or deceptive interactions. Crisis‑response protocols should include in‑service support, referrals to real‑world resources such as 988 in the United States, and timely parental notifications when appropriate. Companies should also protect teens’ personal information by restricting targeted advertising to minors and the sale of personal data. Strong accountability mechanisms, including independent audits underpinned by common standards for interoperable audits across jurisdictions, are essential to ensure protections are meaningful in practice. Legislative frameworks should include oversight and enforcement measures that allow governments to assess whether companies effectively implement youth safety safeguards, mitigate identified risks, and comply with youth safety and privacy obligations. OpenAI notes its support for the Parents and Kids Safe AI Coalition’s efforts to advance these principles and promote practical AI safeguards. Additionally, OpenAI supports strong legal and technical protections against child sexual abuse and exploitation, including modernizing child‑protection laws to cover AI‑generated and digitally altered material, clarifying liability for intentional efforts to produce or solicit CSAM, preserving strong enforcement authority for prosecutors and law enforcement, supporting provider reporting and coordination standards that improve CyberTipline report quality and actionability, and encouraging companies to implement safety‑by‑design safeguards such as detection, refusal mechanisms, human oversight, and continuous monitoring to interrupt exploitation attempts before harm occurs.

Education and AI Literacy

OpenAI backs policies that promote AI literacy in schools while keeping educators central to classroom decisions. It believes AI will increasingly shape how people learn, work, and participate in civic life, and that educational institutions play a critical role in building AI literacy and preparing students for a world where AI is ubiquitous. OpenAI supports policies that help students, teachers, families, and communities engage with AI safely, critically, and creatively, while ensuring educators remain central to classroom decision‑making and set the pace for AI adoption in schools. This includes investments in AI literacy, strong core instruction in subjects such as history, civics, math, science, literature, computer science, and career‑technical education; teacher training and protected time for professional learning; workforce‑aligned learning pathways; and expanded access to AI tools, broadband, devices, and educational resources for schools, libraries, and community institutions. OpenAI also supports efforts to strengthen research into how AI impacts learning outcomes, student wellbeing, and educational equity, and to incorporate learnings into AI development and deployment.

Workforce and Economic Transition

OpenAI supports policies that expand affordable AI access, workforce training, regional AI hubs, and broader economic transition measures. It believes everyone should have the ability to participate in the new opportunities that AI creates, which is why it makes ChatGPT available for free. OpenAI supports policies that expand affordable access to useful AI and help workers, entrepreneurs, educators, and small businesses adopt it through investments in workforce training and AI literacy. It also supports the creation of regional AI hubs that connect employers, labor organizations, community colleges, universities, workforce boards, and local businesses, and small‑business adoption programs that provide access to AI tools, technical support, and hands‑on training. OpenAI partners with labor organizations to expand access to training that helps workers build practical AI skills and prepare for economic changes driven by increasingly capable AI systems, and it regularly publishes data on how workers and employers use its tools. It supports workforce transparency measures that help policymakers and the public understand how AI reshapes work and identify pathways for workers to move into new roles and human‑centered work. At the same time, OpenAI is committed to working with policymakers to develop and implement a more ambitious workforce and economic transition agenda that contemplates portable benefits, tax modernization, public wealth funds, and adaptive safety nets.

Deepfakes and Content Provenance

OpenAI advocates for transparency tools like C2PA, protections against harmful deepfakes, and safeguards for election integrity. It believes AI can expand creative expression, empower artists and creators, enable new forms of expression and commentary, and lower barriers for independent creators, small studios, and new voices to participate in the creative economy. At the same time, people should be able to understand where digital content came from and be protected from harmful deepfakes such as deceptive impersonation and unauthorized digital replicas. OpenAI supports policies that promote transparency online, including requirements for AI tools to include provenance signals such as those developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) in the audiovisual content they generate, and is working with industry partners to advance interoperable provenance standards and content authenticity tools that help people understand content origins. It supports policies that protect against the harmful misuse of voice and likeness while preserving safeguards for free expression, parody, journalism, and other lawful uses. OpenAI also supports strong protections against image‑based sexual abuse, including efforts to criminalize the distribution of synthetic non‑consensual intimate imagery and strengthen remedies for victims. It supports election integrity protections related to deceptive AI‑generated political content, including prohibitions on intentionally distributing AI‑generated content to mislead voters, disclosure requirements for certain AI‑generated political advertising and campaign communications, and partnerships with trusted election authorities to provide accurate voting and election information and to help prevent its systems from unduly recommending or ranking candidates.

AI Infrastructure and Energy

OpenAI promotes community‑centered AI infrastructure development, fair energy cost allocation, sustainability reporting, and job‑creation incentives. It believes that if AI infrastructure is developed in partnership with communities, it is an engine of local, state, and national economic growth. Partnering with local communities starts with understanding local needs, which is why every Stargate site has a tailored community plan developed in consultation with communities, including on site design and energy sources. OpenAI supports policies that require transparency around water, electricity, and government agreements, with appropriate exceptions to maintain security, commercial sensitivities, trade secrets, and proprietary information. It commits to paying its own way on energy so that its operations do not increase electricity prices, and supports policies that ensure datacenters pay their fair share of electricity costs, including requirements for state public utility commissions to create large load tariffs that require datacenters to pay the incremental costs they create. OpenAI works with local utilities and regulators to ensure datacenters help contribute to grid reliability. It also supports sustainability reporting requirements, including disclosures about technologies and practices that reduce environmental impacts, such as low‑emission backup generators and closed‑loop or low‑water cooling systems. OpenAI supports policies that help local workers access good‑paying construction jobs, including incentives to use registered apprentices and project labor agreements. Finally, it encourages policies that maintain industry‑neutral and predictable tax and incentive frameworks, hold companies accountable for delivering on their commitments, and catalyze innovation, entrepreneurship, and long‑term economic growth in surrounding communities.