California breaks ground with first AI and social media laws curbing teenage use in the nation

California is enacting some of the strictest artificial intelligence and social media regulations in the country. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed over a dozen bills Thursday, putting more guardrails on California-based industries.

Under one of the bills signed, teenagers’ social media accounts will have some of the most addictive features removed, including infinite scroll and personalized algorithms. Another places strict limitations on conversations teens have with AI chatbots. 

“This is all personal, none of this is academic,” Newsom said at the bill signing Thursday. “How many parents are here because of love and exhaustion … feeling hopeless that we just can't compete. Parents can't compete with the engineering, can't compete with the algorithms."

Senate Bill 1119, known as Adam’s Law, is named after Adam Raine, a California teen who died by suicide last year after being “coached” for months by ChatGPT, his mother said Thursday. The law will require developers to impose more testing on chatbots before releasing them, require time limits for minors and implement a public incident reporting system.

“The most important piece,” bill co-author Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-San Ramon) said, will be prohibiting persistent memory, a design system that allows chatbots to remember information a user shares with it. Bauer-Kahan said without persistent memory, ChatGPT "couldn't have isolated [Raine], hooked him and eventually coached him to take his life.”

In a letter to Newsom, ChatGPT developer OpenAI said it “strongly supports Senate Bill 1119 and the thoughtful, meaningful safeguards it establishes.”

Assembly Bill 1709 challenges what lawmakers say are the most addictive features on social media. Companies will be required to either turn off infinite scrolling and customized feeds from accounts belonging to teens 16 and under, or ban those teens from their platforms altogether.

“We’ve all watched anxiety and depression grow amongst children who did nothing wrong except grow up in front of a screen that was engineered to never let them look away,” AB 1709 author Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) said.

Earlier this year, Australia passed a law banning teenagers from social media completely, though Newsom said AB 1709 is “better than what they did,” pointing out teens are able to find ways around age bans.

“This is about the features themselves … the scrolling, the algorithms,” Newsom said. “This is about addressing the substantive issue around the engineering. If you address that, then the age issue is not the essential issue.”

Lawmakers made several references to California “leading” the nation in enacting these types of guardrails. Referencing little regulation efforts at the federal level, Newsom said “the bar is pretty damn low.”

Among the 11 other bills the governor signed Thursday were ones that require a comprehensive reporting mechanism for child sexual abuse material and makes social media companies liable for “causing injury to a child.”

The state legislature also passed other AI bills that await Newsom’s signature. One of those bills is Assemblymember Liz Ortega’s (D-East Bay) AB 2575, which would allow healthcare workers to use their “professional judgment” over AI’s recommendation when treating a patient. According to Ortega, many employers require workers to follow AI recommendations or face disciplinary actions. 

The bill would also make AI developers legally liable if the AI’s recommendations cause patient harm.

Newsom told reporters on Thursday not to “read between the lines” regarding which AI bills were signed first, saying there were more to come in this space.

The bill signing came on the heels of a landmark settlement California and other states secured in a lawsuit against Meta. The states claimed the tech giant purposely designed addictive features to hook children, contributing to a “youth mental health crisis.” 

Meta agreed to pay $17.1 billion over 10 years to the 47 states involved in the suit and change its platforms to address the concerns brought forward. California is set to receive a payout of around $2 billion.