Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
Executives from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have agreed to testify under oath before the New York City Council on October 5, backing down after being warned they could otherwise be subpoenaed to appear. Meta had already committed to sending a senior executive before the other companies received that warning.
The hearing, a rare Committee of the Whole session convened by Council Speaker Julie Menin, will put company leaders in front of all 51 council members at once, including invitations extended to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei directly.
The session arrives alongside a legislative package Menin has framed as a deliberate move away from relying on AI companies to police themselves. The bills would require every AI system deployed in the city to clear independent pre-sale validation and include a human-operated emergency kill switch before it can reach the market. A separate measure would give whistleblowers a cut of any fines or penalties the city recovers after violations are reported, creating a direct financial incentive to come forward. The package would also grant New Yorkers the right to sue developers when a jailbroken version of their tool causes harm.
The timing reflects mounting unease about how much autonomy AI systems are being given. Modern AI agents can now browse the internet, operate computer systems and carry out multi-step tasks with limited human oversight, capabilities that have drawn scrutiny following incidents involving AI models acting in unexpected ways. That concern was underscored in September when Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon resigned publicly, warning that the trajectory of current AI development poses severe safety risks, a departure that added fuel to the push for binding oversight rather than voluntary industry commitments.
With four of the industry’s most influential companies now set to appear before the full council rather than risk a subpoena, October 5 is shaping up as one of the most direct confrontations yet between City Hall and the AI industry over how much regulatory authority a single city can actually exercise over technology built and deployed globally.
