California will impose new standards on artificial intelligence companies seeking to do business with the state, defying Donald Trump’s demands to keep the controversial industry as deregulated as possible.
The state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, signed an executive order on Monday that gives California four months to develop AI policies that prioritize public safety.
Companies hoping to sign contracts with the state will have to show they have policies to keep AI from distributing child sexual abuse material and violent pornography.
They will also have to show how their models avoid incorporating “harmful bias” and detail policies aimed at avoiding “unlawful discrimination, detention and surveillance”. The order directs the state to come up with best practices for watermarking AI-generated or -manipulated images and videos.
“California’s always been the birthplace of innovation,” Newsom wrote in a statement. “But we also understand the flip side: in the wrong hands, innovation can be misused in ways that put people at risk.
“California leads in AI, and we’re going to use every tool we have to ensure companies protect people’s rights, not exploit them or put them in harm’s way.”
California’s changes are the latest in a series of state-level attempts to regulate an AI industry that has repeatedly raised public safety concerns and worries that the expensive tech will degrade the value of labor and kill jobs.
States have passed more than 100 laws to shield children from chatbots and to block AI companies from pilfering copyright-protected material, according to the New York Times.
The White House issued a national policy framework for AI in December that discouraged states from passing such regulations.
“To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation,” Trump’s executive order announcing the framework reads. “But excessive state regulation thwarts this imperative.”
Trump’s order directed the justice department in December to establish an AI litigation taskforce to challenge state AI regulations.
