California lawmakers approve legislation including bill requiring labels on AI content

California lawmakers approved several proposals this week aimed at introducing regulations for the AI industry and protecting people from potential exploitation.

The California Legislature had hundreds of bills to vote on during its final week of the session before they were sent on to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The Democratic governor now has until September 30 to consider and sign the proposals put forward. The decisions will see them being vetoed or let through to become law.

Gavin Newsom has frequently spoken out about AI, with one of his latest interjections in the debate coming at the end of July when he shared a news headline that states ‘Elon Musk retweets altered Kamala Harris campaign ad.’

Alongside the sharing of the news piece, he said: “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal.

“I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”

Manipulating a voice in an “ad” like this one should be illegal.

I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is. pic.twitter.com/NuqOETkwTI

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 29, 2024

If passed, companies could have to watermark AI content with labels

One of the bills which will be considered is AB 3211 which is known as the California Digital Content Provenance Standards. This was voted on at the end of August.

If passed, this would require: “a generative artificial intelligence (AI) provider, as provided, to, among other things, apply provenance data to synthetic content produced or significantly modified by a generative AI system that the provider makes available, as those terms are defined, and to conduct adversarial testing exercises, as prescribed.”

The bill would prohibit providers and distributors of software and online services from making available a system or tool that is designed to remove the data from synthetic content.

Large online platforms would also have to use labels to disclose machine-readable provenance data detected in synthetic content that is distributed on the platform.

A transparency report from large online platforms has been suggested in the bill too, with the expectation that this will be an annual occurrence from July 1 2026 onwards.

Featured Image: Via Ideogram AI

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