California Governor Signs Laws Protecting Children From Social Media and AI Chatbot Risks
Newsom signed laws penalizing social media over child harm, banning addictive feeds for minors and requiring AI chatbot risk checks.
The laws will penalize large social media companies up to $1 million per child if they are found negligent of harming children through their platforms. They also ban technology businesses from offering addictive feeds to anyone under 16, require operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and allow families to opt out of receiving school-issued laptops.
Newsom joined his wife and state lawmakers at a children's museum near San Francisco to stress the importance of protecting children at a time when they have such easy access to social media and AI chatbots. "We have designed cribs to be safe, chairs to be safe, car seats," Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said. "Yet we've allowed technology to be handed to our children and never asked or expected it to be safe."
Newsom also signed laws Wednesday, supported by Anthropic, aimed at improving oversight of AI companies. One measure requires the state to create rules for independent organizations to evaluate the safety risks of AI models, and the other requires the state to create a registry of AI auditors, who would have to be financially independent from the businesses they are auditing.