SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday greenlit sweeping new child safety rules for social media and AI chatbots, including a law backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, amid mounting political pressure to regulate tech giants.
Newsom’s decision to sign the bills comes at a pivotal moment for Silicon Valley. State and national lawmakers are calling for stricter AI regulations after current and former researchers for Anthropic and OpenAI warned this week that the technology, if left unchecked, poses existential risks to humanity. Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok are also facing hundreds of child safety lawsuits, including a blockbuster case Meta settled last month by agreeing to pay states up to $18 billion.
But Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, called the settlement a “drop in the bucket” — and he argued that the federal government should expand on California’s online safety rules.
“We’re going to again lead the nation, but the bar is pretty damn low, and that’s what’s so frustrating,” Newsom said shortly before he signed the bills at an event in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The United States of America can’t get out of its own damn way? Congress and the president can’t lead to get this done? It’s an abomination; it’s absurd.”
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