SB 942 added Sections 22757 through 22757.6 to the California Business and Professions Code. A covered provider is a person that creates, codes, or otherwise produces a generative AI system that has more than 1,000,000 monthly visitors or users and is publicly accessible in California. A covered provider must make available, at no cost, a tool that assesses whether image, video, audio, or combined audiovisual content was created or altered by that provider's GenAI system. The tool must output detected system provenance data without outputting personal provenance data, accept uploaded content or a URL, support API access, and generally be publicly accessible. Providers must collect relevant efficacy feedback while limiting the collection and retention of personal information, submitted content, and personal provenance data. Providers must offer users the option to add a clear manifest disclosure identifying audiovisual content as AI-generated. They must also embed a latent disclosure containing, where technically feasible and reasonable, the provider name, system name and version, creation or alteration date and time, and a unique identifier. The latent disclosure must be detectable by the provider's tool, consistent with widely accepted industry standards, and permanent or extraordinarily difficult to remove where technically feasible. Licensing contracts must preserve the system's latent-disclosure capability. A provider that knows a licensee disabled that capability must revoke the license within 96 hours, and the licensee must stop using the system after revocation. AB 853 delayed the chapter's operative date from January 1, 2026, to August 2, 2026. It also added duties for large online platforms and GenAI hosting platforms beginning January 1, 2027, and duties for specified capture-device manufacturers beginning January 1, 2028. Those later duties were not yet operative on August 10, 2026.
Regulation
Verified record
- Risk classification summary
- Deceptive or falsely authentic AI-generated audiovisual content, deepfakes, unavailable or stripped provenance information, and consumer inability to determine content origin or modification history. The act governs content transparency rather than general model-safety risk tiers.
- Requirements summary
- Covered providers must provide a free, generally public detection tool for their own GenAI-generated or altered audiovisual content; support upload, URL, and API access; output system but not personal provenance data; collect efficacy feedback subject to privacy and retention limits; offer a manifest AI-generated disclosure; embed a durable latent disclosure with provider, system/version, timestamp, and unique identifier; and preserve disclosure capability in third-party licensing. Large-platform and hosting-platform duties begin January 1, 2027; capture-device duties begin January 1, 2028.
- Affected entities
- Currently: covered providers whose publicly accessible GenAI system has more than 1,000,000 monthly visitors or users in California, plus third-party licensees. From January 1, 2027: qualifying large online platforms and GenAI hosting platforms. From January 1, 2028: covered capture-device manufacturers. Exclusively non-user-generated video-game, television, streaming, movie, or interactive products and services are excluded.
- Enforcement summary
- The California Attorney General, a city attorney, or a county counsel may file a civil action. A prevailing public plaintiff is entitled to reasonable attorney’s costs and fees. For a third-party licensee’s failure to cease use after revocation, those public authorities may seek injunctive relief and reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.
- Penalty summary
- $5,000 per violation. Each day that a covered provider, large online platform, or capture-device manufacturer remains in violation is a separate violation. The statute separately specifies injunctive relief and costs or fees for the identified third-party-licensee violation.