New York City lawmakers grilled executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta at a rare full-council hearing on artificial intelligence on October 5.

All 51 council members attended the session at City Hall. The companies testified under oath after the council threatened subpoenas. Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI was subpoenaed but did not appear.

Council Speaker Julie Menin, who called the hearing, said the idea that AI will self-regulate ‘defies all reason’. The council is weighing 10 bills to rein in the technology.

The broadest bill would bar selling or deploying an AI system in the city without third-party validation, and require every system to have a kill switch. Violations would carry a 25,000-dollar penalty each.

Other proposals include a whistleblower bounty, a private right to sue over AI harms, and chatbot disclosure rules. Whistleblowers including ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned lawmakers that firms cannot quantify the risk of catastrophic AI failures.