What the laws ban and require

The California AI laws Gavin Newsom signed on Thursday pair four prohibitions with one disclosure duty, each aimed at a specific way employers deploy the technology against their staff.

• •No employer may rely entirely on AI when deciding whether to fire a worker.
• •Tools that predict an employee's emotional state are off limits.
• •Companies may not collect neural data, meaning information from the electrical signals of a person's brain or nerves.
• •Businesses must notify workers when layoffs were caused by AI.
• •AI surveillance inside workplace bathrooms is prohibited.

Why workers pushed for the rules

The rules answer workers' mounting worries that AI will take their jobs, lead to discrimination and increase workplace surveillance. Unions, worker advocates and even some lawmakers pushed for them, a regulatory shift for a technology that has largely developed unchecked. Annette Bernhardt, senior tech policy adviser at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, said workers are increasingly speaking up about fearing job loss and about algorithmic surveillance and control that they describe as dehumanizing.

Some of the targeted practices are already familiar. Heat maps track employees' movements, including how long they spend in the bathroom. Amazon warehouse workers have previously complained about being timed on their bathroom breaks, and Kaiser Permanente nurses have said automated systems rated their tone of voice in patient interactions.

The signing also lands against a backdrop of record AI spending at big tech companies and massive job cuts. In June, Meta paused a program that tracked workers' computer activities to train its AI models. A month later, dozens of employees sued, claiming the company's AI tools singled out staff with disability accommodations or on medical or parental leave for layoffs.

A model for the rest of the country

California hosts many of the leading AI developers and stands among the first states to roll out sweeping workplace rules targeting the technology, and its package could open the door to broader safeguards across the US. Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas recently passed AI workplace laws of their own, each narrower in scope than California's.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, has been helping leaders across the country write regulations and said more bills are being lined up for consideration. She called companies' undisclosed uses of AI a source of fear in their own right. One response from worker advocates and union groups such as the federation is following AI companies' latest products, since a tool on the market is, in her view, a good sign it is already in use.

The state acted while the federal government stays hands-off on AI even as calls to regulate the technology mount. Gonzalez said California workers are showing the country for the first time that these impacts do not have to be accepted.

She called the new laws a turning point.

Enforcement gaps and employer concerns

Robin Feldman, director and founder of the AI Law & Innovation Institute at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, called the laws a key step that is somewhat limited in implementation. The bills carry no private enforcement, she noted: workers cannot sue, and only the government can act.

Danielle Ochs, a shareholder at employment law firm Ogletree Deakins' San Francisco office, said the new laws have teeth, though it is unclear how sweeping the change will be. In her experience, employers generally are not grappling with the AI uses the regulations outline and care more about how to responsibly implement AI across their systems. She favors guardrails matched to employers' wider AI use over rules fixed on specific tools or uses.

Rules that demand 10 separate hurdles per tool, she argued, do not match how employers actually operate.

Opponents, she said, worry the rules could unexpectedly prohibit helpful AI, such as systems that ensure truckers do not fall asleep at the wheel.

The California Federation of Labor Unions plans to use the momentum to revive a bill requiring employers to disclose when they use AI in the workplace, after that measure died in the state's assembly appropriations committee this year.