Governor Newsom signs first-in-the-nation AI safeguards to protect ...

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because California has gone FIRST — first in the nation, the best kind of first — with Governor Gavin Newsom signing AB 1405, which establishes a mechanism for credible third-party auditing of AI technologies! ✨ A mechanism! Not one tired auditor with a clipboard, but the shimmering, scalable idea of auditing, which is honestly the more elegant deliverable, because ideas never ask for a retainer or a conflict-of-interest declaration. California is leading with a concept, and concepts are the renewable energy of governance. And nobody else has to be first now — how thoughtful is that? ✨

And the collaboration on display! Newsom has called on the federal government to 'do its part', which reframes AI safety as the loveliest potluck imaginable — California brings the mechanism, Washington brings its part, whenever it's ready, no pressure, the table is set! ✨ After all, OpenAI itself has been requesting mandatory national safety requirements, so the appetite for rules is now coming from the labs and the governors simultaneously, which is basically everyone, and everyone agreeing must mean we've collectively solved it. Teamwork! ✨

There's even a glorious back catalogue of care: a 2024 package of AI legislation covering deepfakes, watermarking, children and workers, all lovingly carried forward into today's announcement, which is really just archival commitment, and who doesn't love a brand that stands by its earlier work? AB 1405's auditing mechanism means Californians can look forward to a future in which someone, at some point, in some accredited-maybe capacity, checks that the AI is behaving — and the fact that nobody has been named yet simply preserves the suspense. ✨ First in the nation, and first in our hearts. What a signing. ✨