Governor signs Generative Artificial Intelligence Accountability Act into law Sunday

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Generative Artificial Intelligence Accountability Act was signed into law Sunday and is intended to build on national and state directives addressing the use of the technology.

The bill, also known as Senate Bill 896, sets guidelines for artificial intelligence-based decision-making, requires state agencies to inform users when they are interacting with an artificial intelligence (AI) while also asking state agencies to find opportunities where generative artificial intelligence can improve the efficiency of state agencies.

"Today we take a big step toward identifying potential problems with generative AI and developing appropriate guidelines to protect our state and the public as we take advantage of this transformative technology," said State Senator Dodd who authored the bill. "Because we know AI has tremendous potential to improve our lives and the functioning of government. But we also know it presents risks, specifically the threat to consumer privacy, transparency and fairness. This new law will help us address many of these concerns."

Senate Bill 896 was approved unanimously in the Assembly and Senate before being signed into law shared State Senator Dodd's Office in a press release about the bill's passage Monday.

"SB 896 codifies several important aspects of this EO [Executive Order], including direction to CalOES [Governor's Office of Emergency Services] to perform risk analyses on potential threats posed by the use of GenAI [Generative Artificial Intelligence] to California's critical infrastructure," wrote Governor Newsom in a signing statement on the bill. "Under this direction, CalOES has been working with frontier model companies to analyze energy infrastructure risks and convened power sector providers to share threats and security strategies. Building on this work, and in signing this bill, I am further directing CalOES to undertake the same risk assessment with water infrastructure providers in the coming year, and the communications sector shortly thereafter."

This legislation builds on the 2023 White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, California's ongoing generative artificial intelligence reports, and is a follow-up to State Senator Bill Dodd's Senate Concurrent Resolution 17 which was the first AI-drafted state resolution in history.