California's AI Chatbot Battle Moves to the Ballot Box
Key highlights this week:
We’re tracking 1,126 bills in all 50 states related to AI during the 2025 legislative session.
Legislative champions of AI safety, California’s Scott Wiener and New York’s Alex Bores, have both announced congressional campaigns.
A bipartisan bill in Congress would require age verification for companion chatbots.
And companion chatbots have emerged as a major issue in California as a measure to regulate the technology aims to be placed on the 2026 ballot, which is the topic of this week’s deep dive.
You thought we were done talking about California AI policy for a while after Gov. Newsom (D) finished signing a dozen AI bills into law, but, similar to last year, the bills that didn’t earn the governor’s signature earned as much attention as those that did. This year, the governor had two AI chatbot bills on his desk that aimed to help protect children, and he chose to enact the less restrictive version of the AI chatbot legislation.
But in California, like in 19 other states, citizens can circumvent the governor and the legislature altogether and enact laws directly through a ballot measure. And a week after Gov. Newsom vetoed the more restrictive AI chatbot bill, supporters of that effort filed a ballot measure that lifts much of the same bill language for the 2026 ballot. Considering the popularity of regulating AI among the general public, I’m surprised an AI ballot measure announcement took this long.
A week after Gov. Newsom vetoed Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan’s (D) Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act (CA AB 1064), supporters of the measure — led by James Steyer’s kids' safety group Common Sense Media — filed an initiated state statute with the California Secretary of State. The proposal lifts much of the language from the LEAD for Kids proposal, which would have prohibited AI developers from producing a companion chatbot intended to be used by or on a child unless the companion chatbot was not foreseeably capable of doing harm to a child. But the proposed measure also goes beyond the original chatbot bill.
