California Governor Gavin Newsom is currently considering 38 AI-related bills, including the highly controversial SB 1047, which the state legislature has sent to the governor for final approval. These bills seek to address some of the most pressing issues in artificial intelligence, including the existential risks posed by future AI systems, deepfake nudes created by AI image generators, and Hollywood studios creating AI clones of deceased actors.
“California, home to many of the world's leading AI companies, is leveraging these transformative technologies to address pressing challenges and studying the risks they pose,” Newsom's office said in a press release.
To date, Governor Newsom has signed eight bills into law, including the most far-reaching AI legislation in U.S. history.
Deepfake Nudes
Governor Newsom signed two bills on Thursday to address the creation and spread of deepfake nudes: SB 926 creates a new crime in California, making it illegal to blackmail someone with an AI-generated lookalike nude image;
SB 981, which also passed Tuesday, requires social media platforms to provide a channel for users to report deepfake nudes that resemble them. The content must be temporarily blocked while the platforms investigate and, if confirmed, permanently removed.
watermark
Also on Thursday, Governor Newsom signed a bill that will make AI-generated content more visible to the public. SB 942 requires widely used generative AI systems to disclose AI-generated content in the content's provenance data. There are several free tools available to help people read this provenance data and detect AI-generated content.
Election deepfakes
Earlier this week, California's governor signed three bills aimed at cracking down on AI deepfakes that could influence elections.
One of California's new laws, AB 2655, requires major online platforms like Facebook and X to remove or label AI deepfakes related to elections and create channels for reporting such content. Candidates and officeholders can seek injunctions if major online platforms do not comply with the law.
Another bill, AB 2839, targets social media users who post or repost AI deepfakes that could mislead voters about upcoming elections. The law took effect immediately on Tuesday, and Governor Newsom suggested that Elon Musk might violate the law.
California's new law, AB 2355, would require full disclosure of AI-generated political ads going forward, meaning Trump might not be able to get away with posting an AI deepfake on Truth Social that Taylor Swift endorses him (she endorsed Kamala Harris). The FCC is proposing a similar disclosure requirement at the national level, and already makes robocalls with AI-generated voices illegal.
Actors and AI
The two bills that Governor Newsom signed on Tuesday were pushed by SAG-AFTRA, the nation's largest screen and broadcast actors union, and create new standards for California's media industry. AB 2602 requires studios to get permission from actors before using AI to create replicas of their voices or likenesses.
Meanwhile, AB 1836 prohibits studios from creating digital replicas of deceased performers without the family’s consent (for example, legally permitted replicas have been used in the recent “Alien” and “Star Wars” movies, as well as other films).
What's left?
Governor Newsom still has to make decisions on 30 AI-related bills by the end of September. During a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during the 2024 Dreamforce conference on Tuesday, Governor Newsom may have offered some remarks about SB 1047 and how he thinks about regulating the AI industry more broadly.
“There's one bill that's kind of outsized in terms of public discussion and awareness, and that's SB 1047,” Newsom said onstage Tuesday. “What are the demonstrable and hypothetical risks of AI? We can't solve everything. What can we solve? That's the approach that we're taking overall on this issue.”
Check back here for updates on which AI bills the California Governor has and hasn't signed.