Newsom signs 13 more AI laws and vetoes limits on therapy chatbots

On the last day to act on the session’s bills, Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 more AI-related laws and vetoed several others. The decisions settled most of the wave of AI bills the legislature sent him in late August, on top of the auditor-oversight laws he had signed earlier in the month.

The largest group concerned work. SB 947, by state senator Jerry McNerney, bars employers from relying solely on automated systems to discipline or fire workers. It requires a human to corroborate such decisions and workers to be told when a system was used. Newsom had vetoed a broader version in 2025; the new law takes effect in July 2027, KQED reported. Other bills require notice when a mass layoff is caused by an AI system, ban workplace surveillance tools in bathrooms, and stop lawyers handing core legal work entirely to AI. The healthcare bills protect clinicians’ judgment when AI tools are used (AB 1979) and require developers of clinical decision tools to reduce bias (SB 503). On transparency, SB 1000 and AB 2713 extend the California AI Transparency Act and make it unlawful to strip provenance watermarks from AI-generated content, and SB 1159 requires public comments at local government meetings to come from real people. SB 1111 extends impersonation law to AI deepfakes. AB 1864 requires gene-synthesis providers to verify customers and screen orders for dangerous genetic material.

Newsom vetoed SB 903, which would have barred companion chatbots from providing psychotherapy and restricted licensed therapists’ use of AI. He called it “overly broad” in his veto message, saying it would “drastically limit a clinician’s use of tools that benefit the delivery of care today”. He also vetoed AB 2575, which would have protected nurses who override clinical AI systems from retaliation; he said its anti-retaliation provisions would not work as intended. A third veto stopped AB 2656, which would have required public employers to give unions 45 days’ notice before deploying generative AI; he said it would add “redundant administrative layers”.

Newsom also signed an executive order directing state agencies to keep using the term “artificial intelligence”. It was a rebuttal to Trump’s order of the day before renaming it “super intelligence” in federal usage. “Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House,” his office said.