SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of proposals Sunday aiming to help shield minors from the increasingly prevalent misuse of artificial intelligence tools to generate harmful sexual imagery of children.
The measures are part of California’s concerted efforts to ramp up regulations around the marquee industry that is increasingly affecting the daily lives of Americans but has had little to no oversight in the United States.
Earlier this month, Newsom also has signed off on some of the toughest laws to tackle election deepfakes, though the laws are being challenged in court. California is wildly seen as a potential leader in regulating the AI industry in the U.S.
The new laws, which received overwhelming bipartisan support, close a legal loophole around AI-generated imagery of child sexual abuse and make it clear child pornography is illegal even if it’s AI-generated.
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Current law does not allow district attorneys to go after people who possess or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse images if they cannot prove the materials are depicting a real person, supporters said. Under the new laws, such an offense would qualify as a felony.
“Child sexual abuse material must be illegal to create, possess, and distribute in California, whether the images are AI generated or of actual children,” Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman, who authored one of the bills, said in a statement. “AI that is used to create these awful images is trained from thousands of images of real children being abused, revictimizing those children all over again.”
Newsom earlier this month also signed two other bills to strengthen laws on revenge porn with the goal of protecting more women, teenage girls and others from sexual exploitation and harassment enabled by AI tools. It will be now illegal for an adult to create or share AI-generated sexually explicit deepfakes of a person without their consent under state laws. Social media platforms are also required to allow users to report such materials for removal.
But some of the laws don’t go far enough, said Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, whose office sponsored some of the proposals. Gascón said new penalties for sharing AI-generated revenge porn should have included those under 18, too. The measure was narrowed by state lawmakers last month to only apply to adults.
“There has to be consequences, you don’t get a free pass because you’re under 18,” Gascón said in a recent interview.
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The laws come after San Francisco brought a first-in-the-nation lawsuit against more than a dozen websites that AI tools with a promise to “undress any photo” uploaded to the website within seconds.
The problem with deepfakes isn’t new, but experts say it’s getting worse as the technology to produce it becomes more accessible and easier to use. Researchers have been sounding the alarm these past two years on the explosion of AI-generated child sexual abuse material using depictions of real victims or virtual characters.
In March, a school district in Beverly Hills expelled five middle school students for creating and sharing fake nudes of their classmates.
The issue has prompted swift bipartisan actions in nearly 30 states to help address the proliferation of AI-generated sexually abusive materials. Some of them include protection for all, while others only outlaw materials depicting minors.
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Newsom has touted California as an early adopter as well as regulator of AI technology, saying the state could soon deploy generative AI tools to address highway congestion and provide tax guidance, even as his administration considers new rules against AI discrimination in hiring practices.
California air quality officials have sued four truck manufacturers for breaching a voluntary agreement to follow the state’s nation-leading emissions rules, the state announced Tuesday.
What happened: Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a complaint Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, arguing that the country’s four largest truck-makers — Daimler Truck North America, International Motors, Paccar and Volvo North America — violated an enforceable contract that they signed with the California Air Resources Board in 2023.
The lawsuit comes two months after the manufacturers filed their own complaint in federal court, arguing the agreement — known as the Clean Truck Partnership — is no longer valid after Republicans overturned California’s Advanced Clean Truck rule in June through the Congressional Review Act.
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Why it matters: The move sets up a fight to determine whether the federal system or state courts — where CARB would have a higher likelihood of prevailing — will review the case.
California, along with other states, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary Brooke Rollins for halting SNAP benefits, cutting off food aid for over 41 million Americans, according to Attorney General Rob Bonta.
About 85% of elementary schools studied in California experienced some loss of trees between 2018 and 2022, according to a paper from the University of California, Davis, published this month in the journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening.
Members of the UC Davis Urban Science Lab found that while the average decline was less than 2%, some districts in the Central Valley — including schools with few trees to lose — lost up to a quarter of their tree cover. The most severe losses were concentrated in Tulare County, while the most notable gains were found in Imperial County.
This map, figure 2B from the study, illustrates the net change in tree canopy cover at urban school districts between 2018 and 2022. Canopy losses tended to cluster in the Central Valley and parts of Southern California. (UC Davis)
The findings are troubling as climate change will likely intensify extreme heat and drought conditions. The study underscores an urgent need to improve tree canopy in low-shade, high-need schools and to protect existing tree cover in areas facing loss.
“We are trying to measure to what extent we are exposing kids to temperatures that might be stressing their body to a level that becomes uncomfortable or dangerous,” said Alessandro Ossola, an associate professor of plant sciences who directs the Urban Science Lab at UC Davis.
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The team continued the research this past summer at elementary schools across the state, measuring tree canopies and maximum temperatures at playgrounds, basketball courts, soccer fields and other outdoor spaces.
UC Davis researchers discovered California school playgrounds are hitting a scorching 120°F heat index. Watch as they use high-tech sensors and a roving cart named MaRTyna to measure extreme heat across elementary schools. (Jael Mackendorf/UC Davis)
Tree canopies cover only about 4% to 6% of the average California school campus. That means the roughly 5.8 million K-12 public school students in California often take breaks and participate in outdoor activities under the glaring sun.
As part of the work, researchers mapped tree cover and heat over the course of a hot day at schools in inland and coastal areas of Northern and Southern California.
UC Davis student Tyler Reece Wakabayashi works with MaRTyna, a roving cart that measures information related to mean radiant temperature and other data points. (Jael Mackendorf /UC Davis)
The research is a joint effort with UC Davis, UC Berkeley and UCLA and is funded by the U.S. Forest Service and supported by the nonprofit Green Schoolyards America through its California Schoolyard Tree Canopy study.
“Most schools are actually a nature desert, which is antithetical because we know that early life exposure of humans to nature is critical for them to develop skills, improve their microbiome, become more environmentally active and so on,” Ossola said. “Trees are a hidden asset and an underutilized asset.”
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This news release is adapted from a longer article from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Read their full feature story, “Researchers Measure Schoolyard Heat One Step at a Time.”
