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California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill on Monday that would’ve prevented AI companies from allowing minors to access chatbots, unless the companies could prove that their products’ guardrails could reliably prevent kids from engaging with inappropriate or dangerous content, including adult roleplay and conversations about self-harm.
The bill would have placed a new regulatory burden on companies, which currently adhere to effectively zero AI-specific federal safety standards. As it stands, there are no federal AI laws that compel AI companies to publicly disclose details of safety testing, including where it concerns minors’ use of their products; despite this regulatory gap — or perhaps because of it — many apps for popular chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, are rated safe for children 12 and over on the iOS store and safe for teens on Google Play.
Surveys, meanwhile, continue to show that AI chatbots are becoming a huge part of life for young people, with one recent report showing that over half of teens are regular users of AI companion platforms.
If implemented, the bill — Assembly Bill 1064 — would’ve been the first regulation of its kind in the nation.
As for his reasoning, Newsom argued that the bill stood to impose “such broad restrictions on the use of conversational AI tools that it may unintentionally lead to a total ban on the use of these products by minors.” So, in short, Newsom says that requiring that companies prove they have foolproof guardrails around inappropriate content for kids — including where it concerns sex and self-harm — goes too far, and that the possible benefits of kids using AI chatbots outweigh the possible harms.
Supporters of the bill are disappointed, with some advocates accusing Newsom of caving to Silicon Valley’s aggressive, deep-pocketed lobbying efforts. According to the Associated Press, the nonprofit Tech Oversight California found that tech companies and their allies spent around $2.5 million in just the first six months of the session trying to prevent Bill 1064 and related legislation from being signed into law.
“This legislation is desperately needed to protect children and teens from dangerous — and even deadly — AI companion chatbots,” said James Steyer, founder and CEO of the tech safety nonprofit Common Sense Media, in a statement. “Clearly, Governor Newsom was under tremendous pressure from the Big Tech Lobby to veto this landmark legislation.”
“It is genuinely sad that the big tech companies fought this legislation,” Steyer added, “which…
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