Technology (Artificial Intelligence)

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) grants a consumer various rights with respect to personal information, as defined, that is collected or sold by a business, as defined, including the right to request that a business that collects personal information about the consumer disclose to the consumer certain information about that personal information, including the categories of personal information it has collected about that consumer and the specific pieces of personal information it has collected about that consumer. This bill, the Digital Choice Act, would require a social media company or a person that makes an artificial intelligence model available to a third party for use, modification, copying, or combination with other software, defined as a deployer, to allow a consumer to request a copy of the consumer's personal information, contextual data, and social graph and would require the social media company or deployer to respond to that request within five business days in a format that is, among other things, portable to the extent technically feasible. The bill would define "contextual data" to mean information provided by a user to an artificial intelligence model and any context or derivative data associated with the user's interactions with the artificial intelligence model, as specified, and any model-generated or inferred data linked to or generated from those interactions. The bill would define "social graph" to mean data that represents a person's connections and interactions within a social media platform, as specified. This bill would require, among other things, a social media company to implement a transparent, third-party-accessible interoperability interface that allows a user to choose to share a covered user's social graph or user-selected parts of the social graph to a social media platform designated by the user and enable a third party to, with the user's permission, access a social graph created by the user and be notified when a new or updated social graph is available, as prescribed. The bill would require a deployer to implement a third-party-accessible interoperability interface to allow a user to share the user's contextual data directly with other artificial intelligence models as the user designates and enable those artificial intelligence models to be notified when new or updated data is available, as prescribed. This bill would authorize the Attorney General to adopt specified regulations, as provided, and require the Attorney General to enforce the bill's provisions by bringing an administrative action, as specified.

Existing law, the California AI Transparency Act (CATA) , beginning August 2, 2026, generally regulates provenance data disclosure in content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) , including by requiring a covered provider to make available an AI detection tool at no cost to the user that meets certain criteria. Existing law requires a covered provider to offer the user the option to include a certain manifest disclosure in image, video, or audio content, or content that is any combination thereof, created or altered by the covered provider's generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) system and requires a covered provider to include a certain latent disclosure in AI-generated image, video, or audio content, or content that is any combination thereof, created by the covered provider's GenAI system. Existing law defines "covered provider" for these purposes to mean a person that creates, codes, or otherwise produces a generative AI system that has over 1,000,000 monthly visitors or users and is publicly accessible within the geographic boundaries of the state. This bill would recast those provisions to, among other changes, delete the user threshold from the definition of "covered provider," replace the term "AI detection tool" with "disclosure verification tool," delete the above-described requirement of a covered provider to offer the user the option to include a manifest disclosure in content, and additionally require a covered provider to include in the above-described latent disclosure whether the GenAI system created or altered the content. The bill would delay CATA's operation with respect to a GenAI system that is designed to primarily function as assistive technology, as defined, would prohibit a covered provider from falsely representing that a GenAI system is designed to primarily function as assistive technology, and would punish a covered provider who makes such a false representation with a certain civil action, as specified. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.

Existing law establishes the California Community Colleges, administered by the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, as one of the segments of public postsecondary education in the state. Existing law requires the board to appoint a chief executive officer, known as the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Existing law establishes community college districts throughout the state, under the administration of community college district governing boards, and authorizes these districts to provide instruction at the community college campuses they operate. This bill, upon appropriation, would require the chancellor's office to implement the Future of Creative Industries Pilot Program, commencing on or before July 1, 2028, and to select up to 10 community colleges to participate in the pilot program, as specified. The bill would require the chancellor's office, on or before January 1, 2032, to submit a report to the Legislature evaluating the effectiveness of the pilot program, as provided. The bill would repeal this pilot program on January 1, 2033.

Existing law requires, among other things related to ensuring the safety of companion chatbots, an operator to prevent a companion chatbot on its companion chatbot platform from engaging with users unless the operator maintains a protocol for preventing the production of suicidal ideation, suicide, or self-harm content to the user, as specified. This bill, the Preventing AI User Self Endangerment (PAUSE) Act, would require an operator to adopt and make publicly available a policy governing its protocol for identifying and responding to credible crisis expressions and, for each companion chatbot an operator makes available to users in this state, implement a system for monitoring and detecting credible crisis expressions in user conversations with companion chatbots. The bill would require, if the monitoring system detects a credible crisis expression, the operator to take certain actions, including commence a crisis interruption pause, as specified. The bill would define "credible crisis expression" to mean a statement by a user of a companion chatbot that reasonably indicates, as determined through contextual analysis rather than keyword detection alone, intent to harm the user or others. This bill would require an operator of a companion chatbot to document certain information related to credible crisis expressions and crisis interruption pauses and, beginning January 1, 2028, annually report that information to the Office of Suicide Prevention. The bill would provide for its enforcement, as specified.

Existing law requires a state agency or department that utilizes generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to directly communicate with a person regarding government services and benefits to ensure that those communications include a disclaimer that indicates to the person that the communication was generated by GenAI, as specified, and information describing how a person may contact a human employee of the state agency or department. This bill would instead require that disclaimer when a state agency or department uses GenAI to directly communicate with the public and would define "directly communicate" to mean to use GenAI, instead of a natural person, to communicate directly with a specific member of the public or to communicate a general public announcement, as specified.

Existing law charges the Labor Commissioner with enforcement of various labor laws, including investigation of employee complaints. This bill would declare it is the policy of the state that a worker providing direct patient care be free to use their professional judgment to make assessments and decisions within their scope of practice as appropriate for their patients. The bill would prohibit an employer from retaliating or discriminating against a worker providing patient care, as specified. The bill would authorize a worker who is subject to retaliation or discrimination in violation of these provisions to file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner against an employer. The bill would require the Labor Commissioner to enforce these provisions, as specified. Existing law provides that everyone is responsible not only for the result of their willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by their want of ordinary care or skill in the management of their property or person. Existing law prohibits a defendant who developed, modified, or used artificial intelligence, as defined, from asserting a defense that the artificial intelligence autonomously caused the harm to the plaintiff. This bill would prohibit a defendant who developed, modified, selected, or deployed a clinical decision support system that is alleged to have harmed the plaintiff from asserting a defense that the failure of a licensed health care professional or other health care worker to override an output of the clinical decision support system is a superseding cause severing the defendant's liability for the alleged harm.

Existing law establishes the Government Operations Agency (GovOps) , and establishes within the agency the Department of Technology. Existing law requires the Department of Technology to conduct, in coordination with other interagency bodies as it deems appropriate, a comprehensive inventory of all high-risk automated decision systems that have been proposed for use, development, or procurement by, or are being used, developed, or procured by, any state agency. Existing law defines, for these purposes, an "automated decision system" as, among other things, a computational process that is used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking and materially impacts natural persons. Existing law establishes various public assistance and social programs administered by state agencies, including the Department of Social Services and the Employment Development Department. Existing law provides for the licensure and regulation of specified professions and vocations by boards and bureaus within the Department of Consumer Affairs. This bill would impose certain restrictions on the use of an automated decision system by a state agency to confer services, defined as, among other things, the issuance of professional licenses and provision of public benefits. Among the restrictions, the bill would include a prohibition on using an output from the system as the sole basis for an adverse service determination affecting a natural person, except as specified. The bill would require the state agency to verify the accuracy of the system's outputs and to promote nondiscrimination in its use, as specified. The bill would require the director or designee of a state agency to provide for quality control review of the outputs, as specified, to assure acceptable accuracy. This bill would authorize GovOps to develop, adopt, and make publicly available guidance for a state agency's use of automated decision systems. The bill would require GovOps to notify the Joint Legislative Budget Committee before issuing the guidance. The bill would require GovOps to provide technical assistance to state agencies upon request. The bill would define terms for purposes of its provisions and would make related findings and declarations.