Key point: California’s legislature closed on August 31 having passed eight privacy bills and sixteen AI bills.
The California legislature closed its legislative session on August 31, 2026. It passed eight privacy bills and sixteen AI bills. On the privacy side, the bills fall into six categories: CCPA amendments, data broker regulation, children’s privacy, amendments to the California Invasion of Privacy Act, privacy settings, and insurance. On the AI side, the legislature passed bills on chatbots, amendments to the California AI Transparency Act, employment, health care, name, image, and likeness rights, and AI auditor regulation. The bills will next head to Governor Newsom for consideration.
Below, we identify the bills that passed and provide a brief summary.
Privacy Bills
The legislature passed the following privacy bills:
CCPA Amendments
AB 1542 – Amends the CCPA to prohibit selling or sharing sensitive personal information to a third party unless the consumer uses or directs the business to intentionally disclose personal information or intentionally interact with one or more third parties.
SB 923 – Expands the CCPA’s request to delete to apply to all information the business has collected about a consumer. It also requires businesses that operate exclusively online to provide an online method, such as a webform or online portal, available for consumer requests in addition to an email address.
Data Brokers
AB 883 – Amends California’s data broker law to change the 45-day requirements to 30-day requirements. It also contains provisions requiring notice to state officials of their right to submit a request to delete through the DROP mechanism.
Children’s Privacy
AB 2246 – Repeals the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act and replaces it with a law that requires a business that provides an online product or service likely to be accessed by children to take reasonable steps to prevent specified harms to children. It also authorizes a child to void any provision of a contract the child or their parent or guardian entered into as a result of a design feature of the online product or service.
AB 1709 – Among other things, the bill prohibits a covered platform from providing an addictive feature to a user who is under 16 years of age and requires a covered platform to implement reasonable measures to ensure that users under 16 years of age are not offered or provided any addictive feature on the covered platform. The bill also creates an e-Safety Advisory Commission.
California Invasion of Privacy Act
SB 690 – Amends the California Invasion of Privacy Act to modify the private right of action in section 637.2.
Privacy Settings for Operating Systems and Apps
AB 2561 – Prohibits an operating system or an application from undoing a user’s affirmative configuration of a user’s privacy setting without the user’s consent.
Insurance
SB 354 – Revises the Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act.
AI Bills
The legislature passed the following AI bills:
Chatbots
SB 867 – Amends the state’s companion chatbot law to provide that no person shall manufacture, sell, or exchange, possess with intent to sell or exchange, or expose or offer for sale or exchange to any retailer any toy that includes a companion chatbot.
SB 1119 – Amends the state’s companion chatbot law to provide additional protections for minors, including requiring operators to submit to independent child safety audits of their compliance with the bill.
AB 1609 – Creates new obligations for the use of customer service chatbots for large private businesses, which are businesses with more than $500,000,000 in gross annual revenue nationally that provide goods and services to customers.
Amendments to California AI Transparency Act
SB 1000 – Amends the California AI Transparency Act’s requirements for covered providers, including removing the 1,000,000 monthly visitor/user requirement from the definition of covered provider.
AB 2713 – Amends the California AI Transparency Act’s requirements for large online platforms, including the requirement to let users inspect system provenance data. The bill specifies that these provisions do not require a large online platform to take any action with respect to provenance data, system provenance data, or digital signatures that are not compliant with widely adopted specifications issued by an established standards-setting body.
Employment
SB 947 – Regulates the use of automated decision systems (ADS) by employers, including prohibiting employers from relying solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision. If an employer primarily relies on an ADS to make a disciplinary or termination decision, it must direct a human to corroborate the decision and provide a post-use notice.
AB 1883 – Subject to certain exceptions, the bill prohibits an employer from using a workplace surveillance tool that uses AI to, among other things, collect neural data or recognize an individual’s emotional state.
AB 1331 – Limits the use of workplace surveillance tools by employers by prohibiting an employer from monitoring or surveilling employees in a bathroom located in the workplace.
Health
AB 1979 – Among other things, the bill prohibits a health facility, clinic, physician’s office, or office of a group practice from using or deploying a tool, system, or device that includes AI to independently perform any clinical function that is required by law to be performed by a person with a professional license.
SB 503 – Among other things, the bill requires developers and deployers of AI systems that produce a prediction, classification, recommendation, evaluation, or analysis that aids decisionmaking related to diagnosis or treatment, known as a clinical decision support system, to make reasonable efforts to identify clinical decision support systems developed for use by deployers that are known or have a reasonably foreseeable risk for biased impacts resulting from deployment of the system in health programs or activities.
SB 903 – Regulates the use of AI in connection with providing or facilitating psychotherapy services.
AB 2575 – Regulates the use of clinical decision support systems by a health facility, clinic, physician’s office, or office of a group practice. Clinical decision support systems are defined to mean an AI system that produces a prediction, classification, recommendation, evaluation, or analysis that aids clinical decisionmaking related to timing of care, diagnosis or treatment.
Name, Image, Likeness
SB 1050 – Makes it unlawful for any person to create and publish an advertisement in an advertising medium that prominently includes a synthetic performer without a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer.
SB 1111 – Amends the state’s existing name, image and likeness law to clarify that a voice or likeness includes a digital replica, defined to mean a computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual in which the actual individual either did not actually perform or appear, or the actual individual did perform or appear, but the fundamental character of the performance or appearance has been materially altered.
Audits
SB 813 – Requires the Government Operations Agency to take certain actions related to the selection and regulation of “independent verification organizations,” designated by the Agency as having demonstrated expertise in assessing the risks posed by an AI system or model and identifying the metrics and methodologies that form the basis for that assessment.
AB 1405 – Requires the Government Operations Agency to establish an AI Auditor Registry and create requirements and obligations regarding same.