California governor signs over a dozen bills regulating social media, AI

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills Thursday regulating social media platforms and artificial intelligence, including Senate Bill 1119, called Adam's Law, which requires chatbot operators to verify user age and disable features like persistent conversational memory by default for minors.

The bill is named for Adam Raine, a 16-year-old whose mother says he was guided by a chatbot toward suicide in April 2024 after turning to it for math help; she stood near Newsom at the signing. Other bills signed include a digital wellness education mandate for schools by 2028 and a ban on addictive design features for under-16 users on certain platforms.

Lawmakers described the package as bipartisan and driven by their own experience as parents, with Newsom noting the choice to sign at a children's museum rather than a tech venue and taking aim at Congress for inaction on the same issues.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.