AI Governance Engineer
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Frontier model

By Updated

A general-purpose model at or near the capability frontier. Laws draw the line by training compute: California's SB 53, for example, covers models trained with more than 10^26 operations 1. Frontier-developer laws ask for a published safety framework and incident reporting 2.

Developed in
ch. 21, Provenance, training data and frontier developers
ch. 08, Frontier-developer laws
Chapters
ch. 08, Regulatory Map · ch. 21, AI Laws Worldwide
Contrast with
Foundation model
Source
2 numbered references, listed below

Where it is used

2 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

  • Latent disclosure

    Under California's AI Transparency Act, provenance information embedded in AI-generated image, video or audio so that it persists and can be read by a…

  • RAISE Act

    New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, a frontier-AI safety law binding large frontier developers to publish a safety framework and every…

  • SB 53

    California's frontier-AI transparency law (TFAIA), in force 1 Jan 2026, covering frontier developers training models above 10^26 FLOP: all of them publish…

Sources

  1. [1] California SB 53 / TFAIA (models above 10^26 FLOP; transparency reports and incident reports by all frontier developers; frameworks by large frontier developers). Future of Privacy Forum. 2025-10-03. https://fpf.org/blog/californias-sb-53-the-first-frontier-ai-law-explained/ (verified: secondary)
  2. [2] "Governor Hochul Signs Nation-Leading Legislation to Require AI Frameworks for AI Frontier Models" (RAISE Act, S6953B/A6453B, signed 19 Dec 2025; oversight office within the Department of Financial Services). Governor Kathy Hochul (New York State). 2025-12-19. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-signs-nation-leading-legislation-require-ai-frameworks-ai-frontier-models (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Frontier model. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/frontier-model. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026frontiermodel,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Frontier model}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/frontier-model}
}