Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 new laws to bolster online safety for children, including measures against harmful AI chatbots and social media practices.
CALIFORNIA, USA — Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of bills into law to strengthen protections for children on social media and improve online safety.
At a press conference Thursday in Marin County, Newsom said California continues to lead in online safety and holding tech companies accountable. “This is all personal; it’s not academic,” Newsom said.
The package covered everything from social media accountability to limitations on AI chatbots.
As part of the package, Newsom signed “Adam’s Law.” The law is named for Adam Raine, a California teenager who lost his life after receiving coaching on how to take his own life from a ChatGPT chatbot.
“It was only after Adam died that we learned what ChatGPT had done to him, Adam’s mom, Maria Raine, said.
She said OpenAI had downgraded its safety guardrails twice in the months leading up to her son’s death. “If it weren’t for their choice to change a few lines of code, Adam would be alive today.”
ABC10 reached out to OpenAI for comment on the newly enacted law and is awaiting a response.
Newsom also signed AB 1709 into law, which makes major changes to how people 16 and under could interact with social media.
Introduced by Asm. Josh Lowenthal, AB 1709 prohibits social media companies from providing addictive features to anyone under the age of 16, requiring them to also implement stronger age verification measures.
The bill also establishes an e-Safety Advisory Commission within the Department of Justice.
“This is different than what Australia did; it’s better than what they did,” Newsom said. “…This is about the features themselves, this is about addressing the problem, the scrolling, the algorithms, this is about addressing the substantive issue around the engineering.”
Companies that don’t comply with the regulations could be held liable and have to pay civil penalties if found guilty.
Another bill, co-authored by Lowenthal, AB 2 establishes parameters, including $5,000 per violation, with a maximum of $1,000,000 per child, or they would pay three times the child’s actual damages.
Newsom signing the package comes weeks after Meta reached an around $17 billion settlement in a lawsuit that alleged the company deployed harmful features to keep children and teens on their Facebook and Instagram platforms.
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