California Enacts New Restrictions on AI-Powered Workplace Surveillance
California Governor Newsom has signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1883 into law, imposing new limitations on how employers can utilize surveillance tools in the workplace, particularly those driven by artificial intelligence. This legislation specifically prohibits the deployment of AI-powered surveillance tools that can recognize, infer, or predict an individual's emotional state, or collect neural data. This means technologies such as emotion recognition software and neural monitoring devices, which claim to assess a worker's concentration, fatigue, or stress levels, are now disallowed in California workplaces. The law broadly defines AI as an engineered or machine-based system with varying levels of autonomy that can infer from input to generate outputs influencing physical or virtual environments. This sweeping definition is intended to cover a wide array of existing tools. The definition of 'employer' is also comprehensive, including any person or governmental entity that directly or indirectly employs or cont...
