California

With certain exceptions, the Law makes it unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election.

The Law requires, on or before January 1, 2026, and before each time thereafter, that when a GenAI system or service or a substantial modification to a GenAI system or service (released on or after January 1, 2022), is made available to Californians for use, a developer of the system or service to post documentation regarding the data used by the developer to train the GenAI system or service on its internet website.  The required documentation must include a high-level summary of the datasets used in the development of the GenAI system or service.

The Law amends the definition of “personal information” under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to clarify that personal information can exist in various formats, including information stored by AI systems.

This Law includes transparency requirements for large frontier developers, safety mechanisms so that frontier developers report potential critical safety incidents, and protections for whistleblowers.

This Law is designed to protect children online by creating new safeguards around AI chatbots. The Law provides, for example, that if a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled to believe that the person is interacting with a human, an “operator” (i.e., a person who makes a companion chatbot platform available to a user in California) must issue a clear and conspicuous notification indicating that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human. This Law also requires an operator to take certain actions with respect to a user the operator knows is a minor.

This Law provides that in a lawsuit against a defendant who developed, modified, or used AI that is alleged to have caused a harm to the plaintiff, the defendant cannot assert the defense that the AI autonomously caused the harm to the plaintiff.

The following laws apply in the context of elections in California.

The Law requires a “large online platform” (i.e., a public-facing internet website, web application, or digital application, including a social media platform, video sharing platform, advertising network, or search engine that had at least 1,000,000 California users during the preceding 12 months) to block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California, during specified periods before and after an election.  The Law also requires a large online platform to label certain additional content inauthentic, fake, or false during specified periods before and after an election in California.

The Law prohibits, within 120 days of an election in California and, in specified cases, 60 days after an election, a person, committee, or other entity from knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election communication that contains certain “materially deceptive content,” which includes deepfakes, with malice. The Law authorizes a recipient of materially deceptive content distributed in violation of this Law, candidate or committee participating in the election, or elections official to file a civil action to enjoin the distribution of the media and to seek damages against the person, committee, or other entity that distributed it.  The Law exempts specified entities if a disclosure is provided regarding the materially deceptive content.

The Law requires a health care service plan or disability insurer, including a specialized health care service plan or specialized health insurer, that uses an AI, algorithm, or other software tool for the purpose of utilization review or utilization management functions, or that contracts with or otherwise works through an entity that uses that type of tool, to ensure compliance with specified requirements, including, for example:  the AI, algorithm, or other software tool does not base its determination solely on a group dataset; the use of the AI, algorithm, or other software tool does not discriminate, directly or indirectly, against enrollees in violation of state or federal law; and the AI, algorithm, or other software tool’s performance, use, and outcomes are periodically reviewed and revised to maximize accuracy and reliability.

The Law requires a health facility, clinic, physician’s office, or office of a group practice that uses GenAI to generate written or verbal patient communications pertaining to patient clinical information to ensure that those communications include both: (1) a disclaimer that indicates to the patient that a communication was generated by generative AI; and (2) clear instructions describing how a patient may contact a human health care provider. The bill exempts from this requirement a communication read and reviewed by a human licensed or certified health care provider.

This Law makes provisions of law that prohibit the use of specified terms, letters, or phrases to falsely indicate or imply possession of a license or certificate to practice a health care profession enforceable against an entity who develops or deploys AI or GenAI technology that uses one or more of those terms, letters, or phrases in its advertising or functionality.

The Law is intended to help performers and other individuals protect their digital likeness in audio and visual productions and requires contracts to specify the use of AI-generated digital replicas of a performer’s voice or likeness.  The Law provides that a provision in an agreement between an individual and any other person for the performance of personal or professional services is unenforceable only as it relates to a new performance by a digital replica of the individual if the provision meets all of the following conditions:

• the provision allows for the creation and use of a digital replica of the individual's voice or likeness in place of work the individual would otherwise have performed in person;
• the provision does not include a reasonably specific description of the intended uses of the digital replica (except that failure to include a reasonably specific description of the intended uses of a digital replica does not render the provision unenforceable if the uses are consistent with the terms of the contract for the performance of personal or professional services and the fundamental character of the photography or soundtrack as recorded or performed); and
• the individual was not represented:
• by legal counsel who negotiated on behalf of the individual licensing the individual’s digital replica rights, and the commercial terms are stated clearly and conspicuously in a contract or other writing signed or initialed by the individual; or
• by a labor union representing workers who do the proposed work, and the terms of their collective bargaining agreement expressly addresses uses of digital replicas.

The Law makes a person who produces, distributes, or makes available the digital replica of a deceased personality’s voice or likeness in an expressive audiovisual work or sound recording without specified prior consent liable to any injured party in an amount equal to the greater of $10,000 or the actual damages suffered by a person controlling the rights to the deceased personality’s likeness.

The Law requires a social media platform to submit a terms of service report to the Attorney General on a semiannual basis that contains, among other things:

• A detailed description of content moderation practices used, including how automated content moderation systems enforce the platform’s terms of service and when these systems involve human review; and
• Information on content belonging to certain specified categories that was flagged and how the content was flagged and actioned by AI software.

The Law requires a covered provider (i.e., a person that creates, codes, or otherwise produces a GenAI system that has over 1 million monthly visitors or users and is publicly accessible within the geographic boundaries of the state) to:  make available an AI detection tool at no cost to the user that meets certain criteria; collect user feedback related to the efficacy of the covered provider’s AI detection tool and incorporate relevant feedback into any attempt to improve the efficacy of the tool; include a latent disclosure in AI-generated image, video, or audio content created by the covered provider’s GenAI system that meets specified criteria; and require by contract, where a covered provider licenses its GenAI system to a third party, that the licensee maintain the system’s capability to include a disclosure in content the system creates or alters.

This Law amends the effective date of the existing California AI Transparency Act from January 1, 2026 to August 2, 2026. In addition, AB 853 includes certain requirements for a “large online platform” (i.e., a public-facing social media platform, file-sharing platform, mass messaging platform, or stand-alone search engine that distributes content to users who did not create or collaborate in creating the content that exceeded 2 million unique monthly users during the preceding 12 months).

This Law requires a social media platform to immediately remove a reported instance of “sexually explicit digital identity theft” from being publicly viewable on the social media platform if the social media platform determines there is a reasonable basis to believe the reported sexually explicit digital identity theft is sexually explicit digital identity theft as set forth under the Law.

Existing law requires a social media company to submit a terms of service report on a semiannual basis to the Attorney General, which must include, for each social medial platform owned or operated by the company, specified information that is disaggregated into categories, including how content was flagged or actioned by company employees or contractors, AI software, etc. This Law defines “artificial intelligence” for the purposes of these provisions to mean an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments.

This Law requires that the announcement of an automatic dialing-announcing device inform the person called if the prerecorded message uses an artificial voice.

This Law provides that a real estate broker or salesperson, or person acting on their behalf, who includes a “digitally altered image” in an advertisement or other promotional material for the sale of real property must include a statement disclosing that the image has been altered and a link to a publicly accessible internet website, URL, or QR code that includes the original, unaltered image.