Gov. Newsom Signs Sweeping New Rules for Online Child Safety
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of online child safety bills Thursday, enacting some of the strongest protections for young users in the country.
The measures include Senate Bill 1119, co-authored by Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, and Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, which requires operators of AI companion chatbots to assess the risks their products pose to children, document what they find and hand the results to an independent auditor. The bill also requires parental controls and in-app crisis support.
Assembly Bill 2, from Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, raises the damages a large social media company can face when its conduct harms a child. Lowenthal pursued the measure across three legislative sessions.
AB 1709 bars social media platforms from serving addictive engagement features to users under 16. It passed the Legislature without a no vote.
“We’re establishing a framework,” Newsom said in a press conference Thursday announcing the package, “so that we can really enact a more aggressive posture as it relates to enforcement.”
First partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom also spoke at the event, reflecting her behind-the-scenes engagement with the policy debate over how best to protect children online. “Today has been a long time in coming,” she said. “And this one is truly for the kids. The kids who are with us, and the kids, like Adam and Owl, who are not.”
Standing behind the documentary filmmaker were two mothers of children who died by suicide: Maria Raine and Victoria Hinks.
“This is an incredible moment,” said Jim Steyer, whose group, Common Sense Media, backed all three bills.
Speaking at the same press conference, Steyer called the legislative package “the first step in the United States towards comprehensive regulation and common-sense guardrails around these platforms.”
A day earlier, Newsom signed two bills that set up some of the enforcement infrastructure that would strengthen the hand of state regulators, especially when it comes to AI developers.
AB 1405, from Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, creates a state registry of independent AI auditors and sets standards for their independence, transparency and integrity.
SB 813, from Sen. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, establishes a framework for independent verification organizations, expert panels that can set the standards those auditors would uphold.
“When you have a financial institution, they have to be audited by a third-party independent source,” Bauer-Kahan told KQED.
Just as some government procurement contracts already hold AI developers accountable to federal law, Bauer-Kahan said the bills just signed into law would establish an auditing scheme in California.
The registry will begin to take shape in January, and Bauer-Kahan said it will expand to include a new category of job with a short history: that of the AI auditor.
California already has a companion chatbot law, requiring companion chatbots to tell minors they’re talking to a machine and to route users in crisis to help. But California is not alone legislating in this space: New York’s companion chatbot law took effect last November, and Idaho, Oregon and Washington passed their own rules this year.
“It is so great to see SB 1119 signed into law,” Chris Lehane, vice president of global affairs at OpenAI, wrote in a statement. “It both meets the moment for parents and sets teens up for educational success. … Amongst several key elements, the bill treats teens as teens when it comes to making sure AI is both safe and a tool to help contribute to their ability to learn.”
Anthropic endorsed SB 813 and AB 1405 in August. In a statement, Cesar Fernandez, Anthropic’s government affairs spokesperson, praised how these bills distinguish between an AI audit, which assesses the controls necessary to comply with the law, and an evaluation, which assesses the risks posed by an AI system.
A Meta spokesperson commented specifically on two of the bills, AB 1709 and SB 1119.
Regarding AB 1709, the spokesperson defended algorithmic tailoring of content, writing that it’s “how we deliver age-appropriate content for teens that is relevant to them — all with the proper guardrails in place.”
Regarding SB 1119, the spokesperson wrote Meta is still evaluating the new law, but supports chatbot regulation that “empowers parents to make decisions about how their families use these tools, while making sure key educational and enrichment tools are available to teens.”
KQED reached out to YouTube, TikTok and Snap for comment. They have not yet responded.
“While more work is needed to ensure AI developers are required to have safeguards evaluated by independent third-party experts, we commend Sen. McNerney and Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan for their leadership on these important issues,” Fernandez wrote.
The signings come on the heels of social media posts from Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher.
Coxon resigned this week over the company’s business practices, warning that both Anthropic and its competitor OpenAI are “racing straight to self-improving super-intelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Bauer-Kahan was more interested in the public reaction than the warning itself, which she said covered familiar ground. Bigger statements from larger groups of researchers, she said, have come and gone without breaking through — a shift she also sees in the fights over data centers.
What worries her most isn’t the doomsday scenario.
“I think that the catastrophic risks are sometimes what we talk about, but the everyday impact of these systems are what I really worry about the most,” the Assembly member told KQED. “How do we make sure [Californians] continue to thrive and have meaningful work in their lives, and that these systems aren’t being used to deny them work and healthcare? That it isn’t taking our kids and isolating them and creating a mental health crisis?”