New California AI Law attempts to Create Guidelines
December 2024
In October 2024, Governor Garry Newsom signed the California AI Transparency Act. The act, which is scheduled to go into effect January 2026, is aimed at creating a standard for AI reporting in their jurisdiction. The idea was to formalize how AI disclosure to the various customers.
The Bill, named AB 2013 during its legislative cycle, has specific wording that falls under the Act’s powers. The wording states this Act applies to those with one million visitors per month to the website in question, is publicly accessible and does their business in the state of California. There are multiple companies that this can apply to, chief among them would social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter/X as they have billions of visits or clicks a month as is. “Additionally, a “generative artificial intelligence system” is defined as:
An artificial intelligence that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio, which emulates the structure and characteristics of the system’s training data.
The law also defines “artificial intelligence” to mean:
An engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments.(1)
“Under AB 2013, developers of generative AI models must disclose key details about their training data, effectively pulling back the curtain on how these algorithms have been fed. No more treating data like a casserole of mystery ingredients. The documentation requirements are extensive, covering not only the source of each data point but also its origin, date of collection, and potential biases. By requiring this level of documentation, the law emphasizes the importance of organizations adopting responsible AI practices and providing users and other stakeholders with a clearer picture of how these models function. (2)
As for what these disclosures will do, the bill lays out the requirements. These include:
(1) The sources or owners of the datasets.
(2) A description of how the datasets further the intended purpose of the artificial intelligence system or service.
(3) The number of data points included in the datasets, which may be in general ranges, and with estimated figures for dynamic datasets.
(4) A description of the types of data points within the datasets. For purposes of this paragraph, the following definitions apply:
(A) As applied to datasets that include labels, “types of data points” means the types of labels used.
(B) As applied to datasets without labeling, “types of data points” refers to the general characteristics.(3)
All of these and more also fall under California’s Consumer Protection Act. The CCPA is similar regarding Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, (GDPR) in regulating the privacy for customers. This act makes companies disclose what data they are collecting. In this instance, the AI law is an extension in that companies need to disclose what is and isn’t AI and what information they gathered. With the amount of data being used, extra safety is needed.
AI has become a bigger part of how people interact with day-to-day life. With the rapid increase in their use, states and the federal government have begun implementing patch work laws in an effort to protect users. Check your local jurisdictions for relevant laws and practices.
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