Role: California State Senator, District 11 (San Francisco; 2016–present) Party: Democratic
Scott Wiener is a Democratic member of the California State Senate representing San Francisco's District 11 since 2016. He authored California's frontier-AI legislation, including SB 1047 (2024) and its successor SB 53 (2025), and is among the most prominent state legislators working on frontier-model regulation in the United States. Before his AI legislation he was known for work on housing and transit policy.
Background
Wiener represents San Francisco in the California State Senate. Prior to authoring frontier-AI bills, his legislative profile centered on housing and transit policy. His office coordinated with AI safety researchers, think tanks, and labs in drafting both successful and unsuccessful AI bills.
AI legislation
SB 1047 (2024)
Wiener introduced SB 1047 (Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act) as the first serious US state-level attempt to regulate frontier model developers ex ante. The bill would have required safety evaluations, critical-harm mitigations, and a shutdown capability for models trained above a compute threshold. Governor Newsom vetoed it in September 2024. Wiener publicly disagreed with the veto and signaled he would return with a successor bill shaped by Newsom's working group. (See source summary.)
SB 53 (2025)
Wiener authored SB 53 (Transparency in Frontier AI Act), the successor to SB 1047, signed in September 2025. SB 53 shifts from ex-ante safety requirements to transparency, whistleblower protections, and incident reporting. It is the most significant US state frontier-AI law currently in force, according to the FPF/Brookings SB 53 analysis and the source summary.
SB 243 (2025)
Wiener co-authored SB 243 (Companion Chatbot Safeguards), which imposes disclosure, minor-protection, and crisis-referral obligations on companion chatbots. The bill responded in part to reported harms from Character.AI and similar products. (See source summary.)
Positions and statements
Wiener has argued that frontier-AI risks are serious enough to warrant proactive legal infrastructure and that federal inaction makes state leadership necessary. He has rejected the industry framing that state regulation will fracture compliance, arguing instead that California's market size makes state-level rules de facto national standards. He has been publicly critical of the Trump administration's efforts to preempt state AI laws via America's AI Action Plan and Executive Order 14365 — Ensuring a National Policy Framework for AI.
Relationships
- related: Gavin Newsom — signed Wiener's SB 53 and SB 243; vetoed SB 1047.
- related: California SB 1047 — Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier AI Models Act (enrolled + veto) — author.
- related: California SB 53 — Transparency in Frontier AI Act — author.
- related: California SB 243 — Companion Chatbots — co-author.
- contradicts: America's AI Action Plan — opposes federal preemption of state AI regulation.
- contradicts: Executive Order 14365 — Ensuring a National Policy Framework for AI — same.
- instance-of: Techno-Federalism: How Regulatory Fragmentation Shapes the U.S.-China AI Race — Wiener is the central legislative architect of the state-level half of the current US AI regulatory architecture.