Earlier this week, the Governor of California Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that allows more precautions around the use of AI. California is currently home to 32 of the world’s top 50 AI companies.
The bill plans to regulate AI, work against deepfakes and help workers, especially public figures. Last month at Dreamforce, software company Salesforce’s annual event, Newsom described the proposal to a big audience to draw more attention. “… the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
Many celebrities have been affected by AI this past year. Actress Jenna Ortega deleted her account on X, formally known as Twitter, because of horrifying AI images of herself posted by others. Scarlett Johansson was similarly concerned over ChatGPT’s character Sky’s voice sounding oddly similar to hers.
In fact, it was these Hollywood celebrities who urged Newsom to veto the bill in the first place. Over 125 Hollywood celebrities, including big names like actor Mahershala Ali and director J.J. Abrams, signed a letter to Newsom about the bill last month. Earlier in September, Newsom signed a few laws to work on taking down election deepfakes and to protect Hollywood workers from unauthorized AI use.
AI also caused controversy a few weeks ago with former President Trump sharing AI-generated images of pop star Taylor Swift supporting him. Recently, a fake advertisement has been released by a YouTuber that features Vice President Kamala Harris’ voice, which was created by AI. The ad was shared on X by its owner, Elon Musk, who has shown his support for Trump.
California will be teaming up with the AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li. Together they will be developing protection around strong AI models. This plan will require “companies to test their models and publicly disclose their safety protocols to prevent the models from being manipulated.” AI companies that are considered big need over $100 million to build the systems.
Others have applauded the bill, making statements such as “The California proposal wasn’t as comprehensive as regulations in Europe, but it would have been a good first step to set guardrails around the rapidly growing technology that is raising concerns about job loss, misinformation, invasions of privacy and automation bias.”
jcaramag@rampo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @The_AI_Edge, X
