California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills into law on Monday, most of which are designed to create safeguards in the artificial intelligence industry and address potential harms to children and young users.
One of the most notable laws, Senate Bill 243will force AI companies to create significant guardrails that prevent chatbots from encouraging self-harm among young users. Companies will need to develop protocols that prevent robots from producing content related to “suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm,” says the bill’s author, Democratic Senator Steve Padilla. Chatbot operators should also provide “notification referring users to crisis service providers and require annual reporting on the connection between chatbot use and suicidal ideation to help paint a more complete picture of how chatbots may impact users’ mental health.”
AI chatbots have been increasingly involved in mental health incidents, including those involving suicides and murders. a demand filed against OpenAI by the family of a teenager who recently committed suicide implicates the company’s chatbot, ChatGPT, in the young man’s suicide.
The bill, hailed as a “first of its kind” lawincludes a private right of action that gives Californians the “right to take legal action against negligent and non-compliant developers,” Padilla said. In other words, if AI companies do not comply with the new regulation, families will have every right to sue those companies.
“These companies have the ability to lead the world in innovation, but it is our responsibility to ensure it does not come at the expense of our children’s health,” Padilla said.
A bill was also signed into law on Monday, AB 56which would add warnings to social media platforms similar to those that appear on cigarettes. According to Newsom’s website, social media companies will now have to include warning labels that “warn young users of the harms associated with prolonged use of social media platforms.”
Another bill, the Digital Era Guarantee Law, force platforms institute age verification mechanisms that protect young users from certain types of content. Legislation requires users to enter their age and date of birth when setting up a new device, The edge reports. In that sense, Newsom follows in the footsteps of several conservative states, which have instituted age verification regulations in recent years.
At the same time, while the governor created a number of new regulations on AI, he vetoed multiple laws that would have instituted harsh new punishments for tech platforms.
One of the vetoed bills, Assembly Bill 1064, or the Ethical Development of AI for Children Act, would have essentially prohibited companies from providing young users with “companion chatbots” unless they could prove that their products would not harm children. The legislation would have ensured “that our children are not targeted by chatbots and AI therapists,” said the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan. SF Gate informs that Newsom vetoed the bill amid “a huge lobby from tech companies.”
The other vetoed bill, Senate Bill 771, would have instituted large fines for social media platforms that failed to clean up violent and discriminatory content on their platforms. The websites would have faced fines of up to one million dollars if the content of your site violated California civil rights laws in such a way that the user would be harmed.
Newsom appeared to support the overall goal of the legislation, but said he would prefer to rely on existing laws to address it. “I support the author’s goal of ensuring that our nation-leading civil rights laws apply equally both online and offline,” Newsom said, in a statement explaining his veto. “However, I am concerned that this bill is premature. Our first step should be to determine whether, and to what extent, existing civil rights laws are sufficient to address violations perpetrated by algorithms.”
The vetoes may have been disappointing to technology critics. Under Newsom, however, California has proven to be a state leader in regulatory approaches to technology. The state’s California Consumer Privacy Act was one of the nation’s first comprehensive privacy laws and a model for other states.
Last week, Newsom also signed into law a series of new privacy regulations that will give Californians more control over their data, including a bill that will require web browsers to include an “opt-out” feature that allows users to automatically opt out of data collection covered by the state’s CCPA. The new AI regulations add to that legacy and demonstrate that, whether the attempts are perfect or not, California is, at the very least, trying to reign in Big Tech.
The opportunity to lead in this space, of course, has been made possible by the lack of federal action when it comes to technology regulation. For years before the passage of the CCPA, Americans called for a comprehensive federal privacy law. They never got one, and there’s no sign they’ll get one anytime soon. Now that AI is here, and the Trump administration has made it known that they plan to take a “hands-off” approach to the burgeoning industry, it is once again up to states to take any kind of meaningful action. In that sense, California will likely have many opportunities to lead the way on regulation for the foreseeable future.
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