Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a controversial bill that would have established requirements for artificial intelligence companies to prevent their technology from being used for harm.
“I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology,” Newsom wrote Sunday in a veto message.
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, targeted firms that spent $100 million or more training AI models. It had become a flashpoint in Silicon Valley and national politics.
Wiener called the veto a setback for oversight of massive corporations. In a statement Sunday afternoon, he also said it would have been helpful to hear the governor’s input before he killed the bill but that he’s glad to see Newsom acknowledge AI’s risks.
“This veto is a missed opportunity for California to once again lead on innovative tech regulation — just as we did around data privacy and net neutrality — and we are all less safe as a result,” Wiener added.
Congressmember Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who helms the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, applauded Newsom’s veto.
“As I have said in my letters on the matter, any AI risk framework should be based on empirical data and fit for purpose,” she wrote in a prepared statement. “I also believe this is an issue that should be handled at the federal level.”
In the same announcement about the veto, Newsom also noted that he signed 17 AI-related bills over the last month. He said California would work with experts to develop guardrails for artificial intelligence models and figure out how to harness “their capabilities and attendant risks.”
Newsom also said he would require the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to assess the safety risks AI could pose to critical infrastructure, “including those that could lead to mass casualty events” or affect water systems.
Elon Musk had called the bill necessary despite his frequent criticisms of California Democrats, while Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Ro Khanna, and Mayor London Breed came out against the legislation.
Alec Baldwin, Pedro Pascal, Jessica Chastain, and other Hollywood figures signed an open letter urging Newsom to approve the bill.
Opponents said the bill would threaten the AI industry in its early stages. Some of the most prominent names in tech lined up to bash it, including venture capitalists at Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator’s Garry Tan, and Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li, as well as billionaire Democratic donor Ron Conway.
AI company Anthropic sent a letter to Newsom saying the bill’s “benefits likely outweigh its costs,” but OpenAI opposed it, calling instead for national regulation.
Wiener had argued that in the absence of federal action, California has a “responsibility as a bastion of innovation” to implement sensible regulation.
But the same day state lawmakers passed the bill, the U.S. government announced that it had reached agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic on testing and evaluating the safety of their models.
As part of the agreement, the U.S. AI Safety Institute will be able to access the companies’ models before public release to assess safety risks and determine how to mitigate them.