All the news about SB 1047, California’s bid to govern AI

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047) today. In his veto message, Governor Newsom cited multiple factors in his decision, including the burden the bill would have placed on AI companies, California’s lead in the space, and a critique that the bill may be too broad.

Newsom writes that the bill could “give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology.”

Hollywood is squaring off against Silicon Valley in the battle over SB 1047, California’s first-of-its-kind AI safety bill. Amid doubts about whether Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the legislation, a wave of star-studded endorsements mark the first organized celebrity effort to advance AI regulations beyond the direct interests of the entertainment industry.

On Tuesday, over 125 big Hollywood names published an open letter urging Newsom to sign the AI safety bill. Signatures include Ava DuVernay, Jane Fonda, J.J. Abrams, Shonda Rhimes, Alec Baldwin, Pedro Pascal, Jessica Chastain, Adam McKay, and Ron Perlman. “We fully believe in the dazzling potential of AI to be used for good. But we must also be realistic about the risks,” the letter reads. In a sign of genuine enthusiasm, the letter was written by one of the signatories, according to a person in contact with the celebrities.

California governor Gavin Newsom has signed two bills that will protect performers from having their likeness simulated by AI digital replicas.

The two SAG-AFTRA supported bills, AB 2602 and AB 1836, were passed by the California legislature in August and are part of a slate of state-level AI regulations. AB 2602 bars contract provisions that would let companies use a digital version of a performer in a project instead of the real human actor, unless the performer knows exactly how their digital stand-in will be used and has a lawyer or union representative involved.

As California Governor Gavin Newsom weighs signing or vetoing the fiercely contested AI safety bill SB 1047, SAG-AFTRA and two women’s groups are pushing him to approve it — adding even more voices to an already frenzied debate. The performers union, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and Fund Her have each sent letters to Newsom, all of which have been obtained by The Verge and are being published here for the first time.

The letters from SAG-AFTRA, NOW, and Fund Her highlight concerns about AI’s potential to cause catastrophic harm if the technology is left unregulated. SAG-AFTRA outlines SB 1047’s mandate for developers to test for and safeguard against AI-enabled disasters, like cyberattacks on critical infrastructure or bioweapon development. NOW and Fund Her cite grave warnings from people at the forefront of AI and discuss the technology’s potentially disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups.

Artificial intelligence is moving quickly. It’s now able to mimic humans convincingly enough to fuel massive phone scams or spin up nonconsensual deepfake imagery of celebrities to be used in harassment campaigns. The urgency to regulate this technology has never been more critical — so, that’s what California, home to many of AI’s biggest players, is trying to do with a bill known as SB 1047.

SB 1047, which passed the California State Assembly and Senate in late August, is now on the desk of California Governor Gavin Newsom — who will determine the fate of the bill. While the EU and some other governments have been hammering out AI regulation for years now, SB 1047 would be the strictest framework in the US so far. Critics have painted a nearly apocalyptic picture of its impact, calling it a threat to startups, open source developers, and academics. Supporters call it a necessary guardrail for a potentially dangerous technology — and a corrective to years of under-regulation. Either way, the fight in California could upend AI as we know it, and both sides are coming out in force.

The California State Assembly and Senate have passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (SB 1047), one of the first significant regulations of artificial intelligence in the US.

The bill, which has been a flashpoint for debate in Silicon Valley and beyond, would obligate AI companies operating in California to implement a number of precautions before they train a sophisticated foundation model. Those include making it possible to quickly and fully shut the model down, ensuring the model is protected against “unsafe post-training modifications,” and maintaining a testing procedure to evaluate whether a model or its derivatives is especially at risk of “causing or enabling a critical harm.”

In a new letter, OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon insists that AI regulations should be left to the federal government. As reported previously by Bloomberg, Kwon says that a new AI safety bill under consideration in California could slow progress and cause companies to leave the state.

The letter is addressed to California State Senator Scott Wiener, who originally introduced SB 1047, also known as the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act.

A second California state senator has introduced bills meant to regulate AI systems, particularly those used by state agencies.

Senator Steve Padilla, a Democrat, introduced Senate Bills 892 and 893, establishing a public AI resource and creating a “safe and ethical framework” around AI for the state. Senate Bill 892 will require California’s Department of Technology to develop safety, privacy, and non-discrimination standards around services using AI. It also prohibits the state of California from contracting any AI services “unless the provider of the services meets the established standards.”

A California lawmaker will file a bill seeking to make generative AI models more transparent and start a discussion in the state on how to regulate the technology.

Time reports that California Senator Scott Wiener (D) has drafted a bill requiring “frontier” model systems, usually classified as large language models, to meet transparency standards when they reach above a certain quantity of computing power. Wiener’s bill will also propose security measures so AI systems don’t “fall into the hands of foreign states” and tries to establish a state research center on AI outside of Big Tech.