California’s Newsom Signs 8 AI Bills and Vetoes 3 Others
Key highlights this week:
We’re tracking 1,109 bills in all 50 states related to AI during the 2025 legislative session.
Wisconsin enacted a nonconsensual sexual deepfake law, becoming the 38th state to do so.
A judge upholds New York’s surveillance pricing law, and the state becomes the first to pass a law prohibiting rental algorithms.
Massachusetts introduces a frontier model regulation bill modeled after California’s new law.
Working groups, legislative committees, and task forces in Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina continue to study AI policy in preparation for next year’s legislative sessions.
And after signing a key AI safety bill into law, California Gov. Newsom signed 8 additional AI-related bills into law, while vetoing 3 AI bills, which is the topic of this week’s deep dive.
California has long been a national leader in technology policy, and that continued in 2025, particularly in artificial intelligence legislation. The California State Legislature considered 48 AI-related bills this year, ultimately approving several significant measures. The headline of this year’s enactments is Sen. Scott Wiener’s (D) high-profile AI safety bill (CA SB 53), signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). The new law, which we wrote about a few weeks ago, establishes requirements for developers of frontier AI models, focusing mostly on very large models without requiring obligations on deployers.
Notably, the governor had vetoed a similar AI safety measure from Sen. Wiener last year — the equally high-profile SB 1047. But last year, Gov. Newsom also signed 18 additional AI-related bills into law. This year, Gov. Newsom signed SB 53 first, but 11 additional AI-related bills were sitting on his desk over the past few weeks. Finishing up our late-year spotlight on the Golden State, we highlight below which of those bills the governor signed into law and which got vetoed.
What Was Enacted: The governor signed 8 new AI bills into law this year, in addition to SB 53. This includes topics such as algorithmic pricing, sexual deepfakes, synthetic content labeling, and companion chatbots.
