Newsom signs 13 AI bills, including a ban on AI-only firings

In California, an AI system will no longer be able to fire or discipline a worker on its own. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the No Robo Bosses Act on Wednesday, his office said. It was one of 13 AI bills he signed that day.

The law, SB 947, bars employers from relying solely on an automated decision system to discipline or fire staff. A human must check the system’s output against other evidence, such as manager evaluations or peer reviews. Simply approving it is not enough. Employers must also tell workers when they used such a system. The law takes effect on 1 July 2027.

“No worker should ever be fired or disciplined by a robo boss,” State Senator Jerry McNerney, who wrote the bill, said in a statement.

The state labour commissioner, the attorney general and local prosecutors can enforce it. McNerney’s office called it the first such law in the US.

Surveillance, deepfakes and health care

The other bills cover workplace surveillance, AI in health care, deepfakes and digital replicas. Others deal with notice when technology displaces workers, AI transparency, gene synthesis equipment, and AI use by lawyers and schools. AB 1883 bans workplace tools that use AI to read a worker’s emotional state or collect neural data. AB 1331 bans monitoring staff in bathrooms with audio, video or AI tools.

“AI should expand opportunity, not come at the expense of workers and families,” Newsom said in the announcement.

Lorena Gonzalez leads the California Federation of Labor Unions. She said the governor had shown how to put human oversight over AI at work.

A swipe at Washington

The signings came a day after President Donald Trump hosted tech chiefs at the White House. Several AI companies signed a voluntary AI safety accord there. Newsom criticised that meeting in a video posted on X.

“What I heard in Washington DC yesterday is bullsh*t, and that should scare the hell out of everybody,” Newsom said.

He also signed an executive order telling state agencies to keep calling the technology “artificial intelligence”, Gizmodo reported. Trump had ordered federal agencies to call it “super intelligence” the day before. Earlier in September, Newsom pitched an AI kill switch for California.

A veto on smart glasses

Newsom also vetoed SB 1130, the Associated Press reported. It would have penalised people who use smart glasses to secretly record others. That covered changing rooms, doctors’ offices and other private spaces. It would also have required wearables to show a light when recording from 2028.

In his veto letter, Newsom said the bill’s definition of a wearable recording device was too broad. It could cover some smartwatches, he wrote. California already bars recording people without consent in private spaces, he noted. TechNet, a group whose members include Meta, Google and Amazon, opposed the bill.