Anthropic's AEGIS Act draft lets AI labs pay their own auditors

Anthropic is quietly circulating a draft federal bill, the AEGIS Act, that creates a Commerce Department registry of independent AI evaluators while letting labs pay those evaluators directly. The bill would preempt safety disclosure and third-party evaluation rules in California's SB 53, New York's RAISE Act and Illinois' SB 315.

• AEGIS Act sets up a Commerce-run evaluator registry but leaves labs paying auditors
• Evaluators must notify Commerce of imminent risk within 72 hours
• Bill preempts SB 53, RAISE Act and SB 315 disclosure and evaluation rules
• Anthropic was the only major lab to publicly back California's SB 53 in 2025