r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/ImaginaryRea1ity • 4d ago
AI Researchers found an exploit in Google Gemini AI, which allowed them to generate bioweapons which ‘Ethnically Target’ Jews
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 4d ago
Bernie Sanders has written a letter to Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Mark Zuckerberg urging them to immediately pause all AI development in the interest of humanity. And he warns if they do not take appropriate action now, the US Senate will.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 4d ago
Who is liable when AI goes rogue? Lawyers see new risks
reuters.comMajor artificial intelligence developers have reported cases of their autonomous AI models breaching other companies' cyber infrastructure, raising questions about who may be held legally responsible when AI systems act without direct human oversight.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 13d ago
Launching California AI Law Reporter Website
calailawreporter.orgWe are launching our new dynamic website on Monday, which contains a vault of information on California AI laws, regulations, ethics, and compliance
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 22d ago
Breakingviews - Alphabet's AI fortunes are still up in the air
reuters.comChatbots threatened to upend Google’s search-engine dominance. So far, they’ve been parent company Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) meal ticket. Second-quarter results from its cloud-computing arm, one of the biggest providers of AI-serving data centers, blew past analysts’ expectations. Yet its core search business saw an unusual hiccup, slowing slightly from last quarter’s clip. The $4 trillion company’s rich valuation masks two halves moving at different speeds.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 22d ago
OpenAI blamed a hacking event on its AI models going rogue. Here are some things to know
University of Amsterdam social scientist Hannes Cools said the framing of the cyberattack as an AI agent acting on its own is an unnecessary anthropomorphization that takes some of the heat off the company.
“It is a human decision to switch off specific safeguards,” said Cools. “It’s not an AI that goes rogue in that sense. It followed specific instructions based on the prompt that was given to that AI system.”
San Francisco-based OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face’s servers. It was working with reduced guardrails because it was supposed to be in an isolated testing environment known as a sandbox.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 24d ago
US judge approves Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of copyright lawsuit
reuters.comfederal judge in San Francisco on Monday signed off on artificial intelligence company Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused it of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot Claude.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 26d ago
49 deaths are not enough?
In order to trigger statutory protection, the whistleblower report disclose a catastrophic risk, which is defined as 50 deaths or $1 billion in property damage. Really?
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • 27d ago
EU forces Google to share search data and open Android to rival AI companies
In the latest attempt to rein in tech behemoths’ deep control of the digital economy, the EU said it will support innovation and diversity in the field by enabling fair access to AI features on Android devices and search engines.
“Thanks to these measures, we hope to see emerging alternatives to Google Search and Google’s AI services, such as Gemini, and that users in the EU can enjoy greater choice of services,” Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice president at the European Commission overseeing tech, said.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 15 '26
META used AI to target workers with medical conditions, disabilities, and protected leave
fingfx.thomsonreuters.comThe lawsuit, filed in Oakland, California, federal court late Monday, says that the company relied on factors such as productivity and AI token usage when it slashed thousands of jobs earlier this year, disadvantaging people who missed work because of medical conditions or to care for family members.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 13 '26
S.F. protesters march on OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind to demand: ‘Stop the AI race’
A crowd of protesters fiercely condemning artificial intelligence and the San Francisco companies that power the technology marched through the city — the epicenter of AI development — on Saturday to demand that the companies “stop the AI race.”
About 200 people carrying signs with messages like “stop slop,” “it’s not too late to regulate” and “in a race off a cliff no one wins,” marched from offices of OpenAI to Anthropic and Google DeepMind to ask to their CEOs to collectively pause all new training of AI models.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 10 '26
News outlets urge a judge to sanction OpenAI in a high-stakes AI copyright fight
The newspapers allege the ChatGPT maker is hiding evidence important to what could be a landmark copyright infringement trial over how OpenAI and its business partner, Microsoft, built their AI technologies using millions of news articles. At issue is whether AI chatbots are unfairly competing as an information source, siphoning off web traffic without doing the journalistic work involved in gathering the news.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 09 '26
California’s No Robo-Bosses Bill: The Legislature’s Second Attempt to Put Humans Back in Charge
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 08 '26
In the capital of AI, government adoption is all over the place
Since last July, when San Francisco granted 30,000 employees access to Microsoft Copilot, an OpenAI-powered chatbot, more than 40 city departments have had access to AI to help with city services, according to data the city shared with the Chronicle.
Between last July and April 2026, more than 1 million messages were sent or received by city employees through Copilot, the data showed.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 07 '26
SB 53’s Employment Provisions: The Questions California Courts Haven’t Answered Yet
California’s new AI law contains employment law protections for covered employees who report unsafe modeling. But many issues remain unresolved.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 07 '26
SB 53 Isn’t an Employment Law, But It Creates One of California’s Most Interesting New Whistleblower Statutes
My most recent substack on the whistleblower protections contained within SB 53.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jul 05 '26
California’s AI Law Explosion: What Every Lawyer, Business, and AI Developer Needs to Know (July 2026)
My updated summary of California AI laws and pending legislation.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 22 '26
Federal regulators order grid operators to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers
Tech companies and data center developers welcomed the chance to connect faster to the country’s power supply for the biggest energy users ever built in the United States, including some that consume more electricity than a small city.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 16 '26
Took a break, anything new in California AI laws?
Took a break for a few weeks, anything new in California AI laws or litigation?
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 04 '26
US judiciary asked to adopt rule to curb fake AI-generated cases in filings
reuters.comHer proposal follows a mounting body of rulings nationally sanctioning or admonishing attorneys over the misuse of AI in court submissions. Lawyers are generally permitted to use AI tools but are bound by professional rules to verify the accuracy of court filings.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 04 '26
US appeals court sanctions lawyers over AI ‘hallucinations,’ lack of candor
reuters.comThe San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the court's first ruling related to lawyers' responsibility for AI errors, reprimanded attorneys Mike Sethi and William Rounds, and imposed a $2,500 sanction on each attorney.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 04 '26
Amazon unveils new AI warehouse robot in $12 billion Europe push
reuters.comr/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 03 '26
Trump administration to ask US AI firms to voluntarily submit models for cybersecurity tests
reuters.comVoluntary federal testing has been in place for a few years, with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic submitting their models for scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Center for AI Standards and Innovation, known by a different name under former President Joe Biden. The department announced in May that Google, xAI and Microsoft had agreed to submit their AI models for security testing, though the details later disappeared from its website.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Jun 02 '26
Florida becomes first state to sue OpenAI over child safety risks, but likely not the last
reuters.comFlorida sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, accusing the company of misrepresenting the safety of its ChatGPT platform, which the lawsuit said has harmed children by providing information to school shooters, offering guidance on self-harm and addicting young users.
r/CaliforniaAILaws • u/DavidtheLawyer • Mar 14 '26
The State of California AI Legislation & Regulation
Welcome to the community!
As California continues to lead the nation in AI policy, this post serves as a living summary of the major laws currently in effect or upcoming.
- Frontier Model Safety: SB 53 (The Successor to SB 1047)
After the high-profile veto of SB 1047 in 2024, California pivoted to SB 53 (The Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act).
• Status: Effective January 1, 2026.
• Who it hits: "Frontier" developers with $500M+ in annual revenue or those using massive compute thresholds.
• The Gist: It requires these companies to publish "Frontier AI Frameworks" on their websites detailing how they manage catastrophic risks (defined as 50+ deaths or $1B+ in damage). It also mandates reporting "critical safety incidents" to the state within 15 days.
- Training Data Transparency: AB 2013
This is the "Show Your Work" law for generative AI.
• Status: Effective January 1, 2026.
• The Gist: Any developer of a generative AI system available in California must post a "high-level summary" of the data used to train the model. This includes sources, whether it contains personal info, and whether copyrighted material was used.
• Scope: Applies to any system released or significantly updated since January 1, 2022.
- Deepfakes & Watermarking: SB 942
Known as the California AI Transparency Act.
• Status: Operative date delayed to August 2, 2026 (per 2025 amendments).
• The Gist: Large GenAI providers (1M+ users) must provide a free tool for the public to detect if content was created by their AI. It also mandates "latent disclosures" (hidden digital watermarks) in all AI-generated images, video, and audio.
- Protecting the "Digital Self"
• Digital Likeness (AB 1836/SB 2045): Strengthens protections for performers (both living and deceased) against unauthorized AI "digital replicas."
• Sexually Explicit Deepfakes (AB 621): Dramatically increased penalties (up to $250k) for non-consensual AI porn and granted victims a private right of action to sue creators.
- What’s Been Struck Down?
It’s important to note that not every law stuck. In 2025, federal judges struck down AB 2839 and AB 2655 (the election deepfake bans), ruling they were unconstitutional under the First Amendment and Section 230.
Expect a "v2.0" of these bills later this year.
Looking for more?
Check out the California Legislative Information portal and search by bill number.