Reining in Big Tech: How California lawmakers plan to control AI and social media

SACRAMENTO — Long the epicenter of the worldwide tech trade, California is taking extra motion to defend its youngsters, communities and staff from the threats posed by the very trade that’s grow to be central to the state’s identification and enviable economic landscape.

State lawmakers on Monday handed new safeguards round social media, synthetic intelligence and knowledge facilities at a time when know-how has grow to be intertwined with folks’s every day lives.

Efforts to rein within the energy of Big Tech prolong past issues that TikTok, Instagram and different social media platforms are harming younger youngsters.

Unions and workers worry that AI will take their jobs, and lawmakers try to deal with privateness and questions of safety as AI options get added into good glasses and toys. Californians are involved that the proliferation of information facilities will improve their electrical energy payments and pressure water provides.

“There’s a heightened stage of tech nervousness proper now, and that manifests itself from social media to knowledge facilities to AI taking jobs,” stated Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). “People are coalescing and so they’re demanding that policymakers make change.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has previously vetoed some bills aimed at adding restrictions on Silicon Valley companies, will nonetheless should weigh in on whether or not to signal the items of laws into legislation.

The Democratic governor has acknowledged the problem of adopting laws that shield the general public with out going too far and probably stifling the know-how trade’s development, which brings crucial turnover to the state price range.

“I feel that’s the fixed rigidity,” Newsom stated in an interview earlier this summer time. “We’re continuously type of combating that steadiness.”

The governor, who has shut relationships within the know-how trade from his time in San Francisco, stated solely a few different states have tried to control synthetic intelligence. California, he stated, leads on regulation of social media.

“We’re not rolling over, actually,” Newsom stated. “We’re leaning ahead, and we’re iterating. We will push the boundaries and litigate.”

The looming restrictions on social media comply with a landmark Meta Platforms legal settlement geared toward making social media safer for younger folks. Parents, politicians and youngster advocacy teams are apprehensive that social media is contributing to despair, nervousness, consuming issues and different points.

The actions being pushed within the California Legislature are extra sweeping than that settlement, nevertheless. One of the payments handed by lawmakers on Monday, Assembly Bill 1709, would bar sure on-line platforms from offering an “addictive function” to customers beneath 16 years previous and add methods to confirm customers’ ages.

Under the invoice, prohibited addictive options embrace autoplay and feeds that show advisable content material.

The addictive nature of autoplay and different options is “dangerous, full cease, and that they’re not applicable for the growing mind,” stated Lowenthal, who authored the invoice.

Newsom, who chatted with lawmakers on the Capitol on Monday in what shall be his final common legislative session as governor, praised Lowenthal and the invoice.

“I’m actually pleased with the work that we did collectively on that. My legislator of the yr is Josh Lowenthal,” Newsom stated. “California will proceed to guide on this space as we should proceed to guide on this space.”

After watching know-how “run free” in California for years, legislators at the moment are searching for to “pump the brakes a bit of bit,” stated Samantha Vigil, a UC Davis researcher who constructed a registry monitoring social media laws in states throughout the nation.

“They wish to reevaluate what’s working,” Vigil stated. “What is wholesome and useful, and what’s progress only for the sake of getting a brand new iteration of one thing?”

All 50 states have launched or handed some kind of digital media or technology-related laws, tackling smartphone use in faculties, social media and chatbots, Vigil stated.

Other international locations have taken extra stringent steps to restrict social media use amongst younger folks. Australia banned social media use for these beneath 16, however implementing the legislation has been difficult as a result of younger folks have tried to get across the restrictions.

California isn’t attempting to ban social media; as a substitute, it’s attempting to restrict how platforms design their options.

Parents and state attorneys normal haven’t waited for policymakers to behave. They have sued Meta, Google and different tech firms over the alleged harms their merchandise have performed to younger folks.

In late August, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay as much as $17 billion and make child-safety modifications to resolve a multistate lawsuit alleging the tech firm designed and deployed dangerous options whereas deceptive the general public about them. Meta and YouTube additionally misplaced a social media dependancy lawsuit earlier this yr in Los Angeles.

Assembly Bill 1709 goes additional. For instance, Meta’s settlement offers teenagers the choice to select a non-algorithmic feed and to show off autoplay however, not like within the laws, it’s not necessary. The invoice would additionally apply to different platforms outdoors of Meta. Meta declined to remark.

Tech trade and corporate affairs teams opposing the invoice say it’s too blunt and will reduce off entry to social media’s advantages, in line with the invoice’s evaluation.

“The sturdy path is to implement the focused legal guidelines California already has and to strengthen parental instruments quite than an overlapping framework whose scope may be redrawn by regulation,” stated Robert Boykin, TechWeb’s government director for California and the Southwest.

California lawmakers handed one other Lowenthal invoice geared toward holding social media accountable for hurt triggered to youngsters. Under Assembly Bill 2, social media firms may face fines of as much as $1 million per youngster for negligent hurt.

California lawmakers this yr additionally tried to deal with two different perils of the technological planet — the speedy improvement and implementation of synthetic intelligence and the proliferation of the huge knowledge facilities which are important to sustaining the AI universe.

National and state union leaders have urged California legislators and Newsom to guard staff from being changed by AI, saying it posed an existential menace to the muse of a wholesome, productive democracy.

“AI should stay a software managed by people, not the opposite manner round,” stated Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton).

The state Legislature on Monday accredited McNerney’s Senate Bill 947, which might bar employers from “solely” utilizing automated decision-making techniques to self-discipline or hearth staff. If an employer primarily depends upon this technique, a human should confirm the choice.

Lawmakers additionally accredited Senate Bill 951, launched by Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-Colton). That invoice would require employers to offer a 60-day advance discover to staff and native and state governments earlier than AI-related layoffs. Lawmakers additionally accredited Assembly Bill 1609, which requires massive non-public companies that serve prospects to offer entry to human customer support representatives and to reveal using chatbots.

They handed one other invoice by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) that enacts a four-year moratorium on the sale and manufacturing of AI-chatbot powered toys over issues that the know-how can hurt youngsters.

Lawmakers additionally tackled issues that persons are utilizing AI chatbots for companionship and remedy. Senate Bill 1119, additionally launched by Padilla, would require companion chatbot operators to evaluate dangers, notify mother and father in sure circumstances if their youngster threatened to hurt themself and take different steps to guard youngster security.

OpenAI, which has confronted lawsuits that allege their chatbot ChatGPT offered teenagers with self-harm content material, expressed help for the invoice on Monday. In a letter to Newsom, the corporate stated the laws “pairs sturdy protections with continued entry to AI instruments that may assist younger folks be taught, develop, and put together for the long run.”

Lawmakers named SB 1119 Adam’s Law, after Adam Raine, a California teen who died by suicide in 2025 after conversing with ChatGPT. The teen’s mother and father sued OpenAI, alleging within the lawsuit that the chatbot offered details about suicide strategies that the teenager used.

On Friday, lawmakers agreed on a compromise on proposed laws to control vitality use by California’s rising knowledge heart trade, measures prompted by group fears concerning the huge complexes. Lawmakers say the laws, which handed Monday, would assist shield customers from rising electrical energy prices pushed upward by the sprawling services and to trace the facilities’ immense vitality and water consumption.

At a June listening to on Senate Bill 886 to control knowledge facilities’ vitality use, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth) stated it’s simply “a handful of firms which are gonna make trillions of {dollars}” from AI. They ought to pay for associated utility transport systems upgrades, she added.

“People, I’d argue, will not be even begging to make use of AI,” she stated. “They’re struggling to determine it out to maintain up with the instances, however don’t even really need it.”

Whether Newsom will embrace the Legislature’s efforts to corral Big Tech in California — partially or in entire — stays unclear.

Newsom final yr vetoed an identical AI invoice from McNerney to ban automated decision-making techniques to self-discipline staff over worries that it may prohibit firms’ capacity to make use of buyer rankings. That factor was dropped on this yr’s laws.

Newsom final yr signed Assembly Bill 56 that required social media platforms to show psychological well being warning labels to customers beneath 18 beginning in January 2027. But he additionally vetoed Senate Bill 771 that aimed to carry social media platforms liable in the event that they amplified content material that contributed to hate crimes and different violent acts, saying that the laws was “untimely” and present civil rights legal guidelines may be satisfactory.

Lowenthal stated he’s heard from California households who’re anxious about social media and searching for “aid” from their issues about how the platforms are affecting their youngsters.

“This is a kitchen-table subject,” he stated. “I’ve but to discover a household with school-age youngsters within the state of California, any nook of the state, that isn’t going via this proper now.”

Times workers author Taryn Luna contributed to this report.