Six California AI Bills Clear the Legislature
Six tracked AI bills — SB 867, SB 903, SB 947, SB 951, SB 1050 and SB 1119 — completed the California Legislature on 31 August 2026 and are ordered to engrossing and enrolling. The Governor has until 30 September to sign or veto; none has yet been presented.
Why It Matters
The vote margins are the signal worth reading. The two consumer-protection bills — SB 903 (barring AI from posing as a licensed mental-health professional) and SB 1050 (synthetic performers in advertising) — each cleared 40–0, and the two children's-chatbot bills, SB 867 (companion chatbots in toys) and SB 1119 (chatbot safety for minors), drew one no vote between them. The two employment bills — SB 947 (automated decision systems) and SB 951 (technological-displacement notice) — each drew 10 no votes.
Read that split as a veto forecast. California's Legislature is close to unanimous that AI should not impersonate a licensed professional, a performer, or a safe interlocutor for a child, and is meaningfully divided on regulating AI's effect on employment. The chatbot and synthetic-media obligations are the ones most likely to survive intact; the two employment bills are the plausible veto candidates in the set.
One date correction worth logging: the Governor's signing deadline is cited by the Legislature's own 2026 calendar to Cal. Const. art. IV §10(b)(2), not §10(b)(1) as this tracker had carried. And the Legislature has not adjourned — it is in final recess until it adjourns sine die on 30 November 2026, so bills are still being enrolled and presented during recess.
Action Items
Inventory your exposure — Map which of the six bills touch your products, workforce, or advertising: chatbot and toy makers (SB 867, SB 1119), mental-health tooling vendors (SB 903), California employers using automated decisions (SB 947, SB 951), advertisers using synthetic performers (SB 1050).
Sequence by veto risk — Start with the near-unanimous bills — age-assurance and escalation controls for SB 867/SB 1119, practitioner-identity disclosures for SB 903 — before the heavier automated-decision-system documentation SB 947 would require.
Watch the signing window — The Governor has until 30 September (28 days). Monitor gov.ca.gov signing releases daily; because none of the six is yet presented, the countdown runs to a fixed calendar date, not from a presentment event.
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