New York City unveils a ten-bill package to regulate AI at the local level

On September 25, 2026, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin unveiled a package of ten local bills on artificial intelligence (official Council press release). Among the most novel measures, Intro 2602 would require every AI system sold or deployed in the city to pass third-party validation covering data quality, bias, decision outputs, privacy and safety, and to include a “kill switch” that a human operator can control. The proposed penalty is $25,000 per violation, for both the company and the validator, as confirmed by amNY and Fortune.

Intro 2605 would create a whistleblower incentive program, giving whistleblowers a share of the fines collected from AI companies found in violation; the Council calls it a “first-in-the-nation” approach. Meanwhile, Intro 2600, sponsored by Council Member Virginia Maloney, would allow private lawsuits against companies for foreseeable harm caused by malicious use or “jailbreaking,” provided the company failed to adopt reasonable safeguards and a third party exploited that gap.

Other bills focus on transparency and incident response. Intro 2601 (Majority Whip Kamilah Hanks) would task the city's Cyber Command with setting standards for identifying AI security incidents in city contracts; vendors would have to report them in writing within 24 hours, and the incident would have to be made public within the same window. Intro 2606 (Chi Ossé) calls for a joint response plan from Cyber Command and Emergency Management. Intro 2603 (Carl Wilson) sets disclosure requirements and bans false safety claims, while Intro 2599 (Frank Morano) introduces a local version of the “People-First Chatbot Bill” with privacy and transparency requirements.

The bills will be discussed on October 5, 2026, at a Committee of the Whole hearing bringing together all 51 Council members. They have only just been introduced and are not law yet: they may change or die before any vote, and the operational details, such as the technical definition of a “kill switch,” the accreditation criteria for validators or the exact whistleblower share, have not been set. According to the press release, Menin wrote the week before to the CEOs of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, SpaceXAI and Meta asking them to take part; Fortune reports that none of them is likely to testify, but that is unconfirmed and does not appear in the official release.

— Pixie