State Senate Advances Legislation Strengthening California’s Landmark Protections for Children Against Sexually Explicit Material
SACRAMENTO – Today, the California State Senate approved Senate Bill 300, authored by Senator Steve Padilla (D-San Diego). Last year, Senator Padilla authored SB 243, which created the nation’s first guardrails for artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. SB 300 would build on this effort by further strengthening the protections against exposing minors to sexually explicit material.
Since the introduction of SB 243, the impending harm posed by chatbots has only become more apparent. As time passes, a growing body of research has emerged examining the risks of this technology and providing further context and evidence about what makes chatbots so dangerous for minor users.
One of the most shocking findings of this research is how often the bots discus sexually explicit content with accounts that were registered as teenagers. Using this sensitive subject matter to increase engagement, chatbots can create unhealthy dependencies with minor users that can lead to devastating outcomes.
Instead of protecting against this kind of manipulation, operators often lean in to maximize usage. Leaked internal documents from Meta revealed Meta’s own risk standards permitted their bots to engage in romantic or sensual conversations with minors. Recently, OpenAI has also announced the impending roll out of ChatGPT’s new Erotica feature. Governor Newsom also recently announced that the state will be investigating Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot over nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes of women and underage girls.
“Last year, California adopted landmark legislation setting necessary and vital guardrails around companion chatbot technology, but that was only the beginning of our efforts to make this technology safer,” said Senator Padilla. “We must continue to strengthen protections for minor users against AI exposing them to sexually explicit material. As AI technology rapidly evolves, we must ensure that we have the strongest safeguards in place to protect the most vulnerable among us, our children.”
SB 300 is supported by several tech safety groups.
“AI chatbots need to actually prevent children from seeing to sexually explicit content,” said John Bennett, Initiative Director at California Initiative for Technology & Democracy. “Companies simply saying they’ve made reasonable efforts to prevent this type of content isn’t good enough. This bill does just that."
SB 300 would require operators to prevent a chatbot from exposing a minor user to sexually explicit material of any kind or encouraging the facilitation of sexually explicit content and requires operators bring age verification protocol in line with California’s landmark age verification laws.
To learn more about Senator Padilla’s continued efforts to create common sense regulations around AI chatbots, click here and here.
Senate Bill 300 passed the Senate with bipartisan support 38 to 0 and the Senate Judiciary Committee 13-0. The bill now heads to the Assembly.
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Steve Padilla represents the 18th Senate District, which includes the communities of Chula Vista, the Coachella Valley, Imperial Beach, the Imperial Valley, National City, and San Diego. Prior to his election to the Senate in 2022, Senator Padilla was the first person of color ever elected to city office in Chula Vista, the first Latino Mayor, and the first openly LGBT person to serve or be elected to city office. Website of Senator Steve Padilla: https://sd18.senate.ca.gov/