(Reuters) - AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic have signed deals with the United States government for research, testing and evaluation of their artificial intelligence models, the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute said on Thursday.

The first-of-their-kind agreements come at a time when the companies are facing regulatory scrutiny over safe and ethical use of AI technologies.

California legislators are set to vote on a bill as soon as this week to broadly regulate how AI is developed and deployed in the state.

Under the deals, the U.S. AI Safety Institute will have access to major new models from both OpenAI and Anthropic prior to and following their public release.

The agreements will also enable collaborative research to evaluate capabilities of the AI models and risks associated with them.

"We believe the institute has a critical role to play in defining U.S. leadership in responsibly developing artificial intelligence and hope that our work together offers a framework that the rest of the world can build on," said Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer at ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon ( AMZN ) and Alphabet, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

"These agreements are just the start, but they are an important milestone as we work to help responsibly steward the future of AI," said Elizabeth Kelly, director of the U.S. AI Safety Institute.

The institute, a part of the U.S. commerce department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will also collaborate with the U.K. AI Safety Institute and provide feedback to the companies on potential safety improvements.

The U.S. AI Safety Institute was launched last year as part of an executive order by President Joe Biden's administration to evaluate known and emerging risks of artificial intelligence models.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)