Gavin Newsom seeks to rein in the AI-driven Wild West

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a number of bills into law on Monday, the bulk of which are designed to create safeguards in the AI ​​industry and address potential harms to children and young users.

Among the most prominent pieces of legislation are Senate Bill 243AI companies will be forced to create meaningful guardrails that prevent chatbots from encouraging young users to harm themselves. Companies will need to develop protocols that prevent bots from producing content related to “suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm,” says the bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Steve Padilla. Chatbot operators will also be required to provide “a notice referring users to crisis service providers and requiring annual reporting on the relationship between chatbot use and suicidal ideation to help get a more complete picture of how chatbots impact users’ mental health.”

AI-powered chatbots have increasingly been implicated in mental health incidents, including those involving suicides and homicides. lawsuit Filed against OpenAI By the family of a teenager who recently committed suicide, the company’s chatbot, ChatGPT, implicates the young man’s suicide.

The bill was praised The “first of its kind” law.This includes a private right of action that gives Californians “the right to pursue legal action against non-compliant and negligent developers,” Padilla said. In other words, if AI companies do not comply with the new regulation, families will have the right to sue those companies.

“These companies have the potential to lead the world in innovation, but it is our responsibility to ensure that this does not come at the expense of our children’s health,” Padilla said.

The law was also signed on Monday, a draft law, A B 56would attach warnings to social media platforms similar to those found on cigarettes. According to Newsom’s website, social media companies will now have to come up with warning labels that “warn young users of the harms associated with expanded use of social media platforms.”

Another draft law, the Digital Age Ensuring Act, Troop platforms To create age verification mechanisms that protect young users from certain types of content. The legislation requires users to enter their age and birthday when setting up a new device. Edge reports. In this sense, Newsom follows in the footsteps of a number of conservative states, which have instituted age verification regulations in recent years.

At the same time, while the governor has brought a number of new AI regulations into existence, he has vetoed several laws that would have imposed harsh new penalties on tech platforms.

One of the bills that was vetoed, Assembly Bill 1064, or the Developing Ethical AI for Children Pioneering Act, would have essentially banned companies from providing young users with “companion chatbots” unless they can prove that their products won’t harm children. The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer Kahan, said the legislation would have ensured “our children will not be the subject of companion chatbots and AI therapists.” SFGate Reports it Newsom vetoed the bill amid “tremendous pressure from tech companies.”

The other vetoed bill, Senate Bill 771, would have imposed heavy fines on social media platforms that failed to clean up violent and discriminatory content on their platforms. You may encounter websites Fines of up to $1 million If the content on their site violates California civil rights laws in a way that would cause the user to be harmed.

Newsom appears to support the overall goal of the legislation, but said he prefers to rely on existing laws to deal with it. “I support the author’s goal of ensuring our nation’s groundbreaking civil rights laws are applied equally both online and offline,” Newsom said, in a statement explaining his rebuttal. “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 abuses committed by algorithms.”

The veto may have been disappointing to technology critics. However, under Newsom, California has proven to be a state leader in regulatory approaches to technology. The California Consumer Privacy Act was one of the first comprehensive privacy laws in the country, and a model for other states.

Last week, Newsom too I fell into law A number of new privacy regulations that will give Californians more control over their data, including a bill that will force web browsers to include an “opt-out” function that allows users to automatically exclude themselves from data collection covered by the state’s CCPA law. New AI regulations add to this legacy, making it clear that whether the attempts are idealistic or not, California is — at the very least — trying to control big tech companies.

Naturally, the opportunity to lead in this area is made possible by the lack of federal procedures when it comes to regulating the technology. For years before the CCPA was passed, Americans demanded a comprehensive federal privacy law. They’ve never gotten one, and there’s no indication they will anytime soon. Now that AI is here, and the Trump administration has announced that it plans to take a “hands-off” approach to the booming industry, it is once again up to states to take any kind of meaningful action. In that sense, California may have plenty of opportunities to lead the way in regulation for the foreseeable future.