OpenAI is backing bipartisan U.S. legislation designed to address the risk that increasingly capable artificial intelligence could lower barriers to developing biological weapons.
The company has endorsed the Web of Biological Data Act, AI-Ready Bio-Data Standards Act and Scale Biology Act.
It is also supporting a provision of the FRONTIER Act that would require leading AI developers to use independent evaluators to assess model safety.
OpenAI says stronger safeguards are needed as advanced models become increasingly capable of working with biological information.
The concern is prospective.
There is no evidence from these proposals that current AI systems have enabled someone to build a biological weapon.
The legislation instead addresses the possibility that future systems could make dangerous biological capabilities easier to access, while also establishing standards intended to improve legitimate scientific use of biological data.
OpenAI’s support follows a broader change in the company’s public position on AI regulation.
On September 9, it called for mandatory national safety requirements based on model capabilities, including independent assessment, incident reporting and shared thresholds governing when advanced development should slow or stop.
The company argued that voluntary safeguards adopted independently by AI laboratories are no longer sufficient.
The debate over frontier AI safety is therefore increasingly moving into legislation.
One of the companies building the world’s most capable AI systems is now asking Congress to make some safety requirements mandatory.
Sources
- Reuters – OpenAI backs congressional bills addressing AI biological-weapon risks
- OpenAI – Policy position on mandatory AI safety requirements
- U.S. biotechnology commission – AI-Ready Bio-Data Standards Act of 2026
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