Some of the biggest tech companies in the generative AI development space have changed their collective minds about backing a new labeling bill.
The bill, titled AB 3211, was introduced in February of this year to the California Legislature. For now, it’s still going through its In Floor process of being debated and read a final time before the Senate.
However, it has also more recently picked up some new backing from powerful forces in the AI industry.
Among other things, the legislation would require that watermarks be embedded into the metadata of AI-generated content of various kinds. This would apply not just to images but also to video, audio and presumably, other types of content.
Originally, major players in the development of AI content technologies opposed the new legislation, calling it “unworkable” and “burdensome” among other things.
Now they’ve changed their minds it seems. These key companies include OpenAI, its backer, Microsoft, and Adobe. All three also happen to be part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.
This cooperative effort, spearheaded by Adobe in particular, seeks to implement a digital signature system called C2PA as a standard for defining and labeling images based on their provenance and their possible use of AI.
The C2PA standard is indeed already being implemented by some camera manufacturers and has even been applied to other situations, such as when users of Instagram upload images. These can then can be flagged as AI-generated if they include C2PA code in their metadata, though this has shown problematic results.
C2PA
According to reporting from Reuters, California lawmakers have already tried to introduce 65 different bills revolving around AI content regulation and regulation of AI in general during this last legislative season.
These bills have varied widely in their aims and the scope of what they request, with some being considered both technically and practically unworkable.
Bill AB 3211 has also been criticized under some of these same rubrics but now it’s being supported by the companies above under the argument that AI watermarking is important.
OpenAI in particular recently wrote a letter to California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, AB 3211’s author, arguing that it believes watermarking and provenance-checking for AI-generated content to be important.
According to OpenAI’s letter, as seen by Reuters, “New technology and standards can help people understand the origin of content they find online, and avoid confusion between human-generated and photorealistic AI-generated content,”
By extension, Microsoft also supports the new bill since OpenAI does. Though Microsoft isn’t a majority owner of the AI firm, despite what some people believe, it has enough of a stake in OpenAI for their interests and agreements to dovetail frequently.
As for Adobe, its director of Policy and Government Relations, Anne Perkins, recently stated that Adobe has provided technical assistance on the capabilities of provenance technology for the drafting of bill AB 3211.
According to Perkins in comments to the website TechRepublic, “Adobe has always been aligned with the goal of AB-3211 to bring more trust and transparency to our AI-powered world.”
She added,
“Today’s bill provides an effective framework that allows good actors to be trusted, while protecting people from harmful AI-generated deepfakes, which is especially critical in an election year when misinformation tends to swirl and the stakes are high.”
Currently, Bill AB 3211 is slated for a final reading today, August 30th in the California Senate. If approved, it will pass on to the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom for approval or veto by September 30.
Previously, BSA, a software industry advocacy group that represents the interests of Microsoft, Adobe and other tech companies, objected to older drafts of AB 3211.
In a letter sent to the California Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee in April, the BSA criticized the following:
The scope of content to be watermarked.
Requirements for providing tools to verify watermarks.
The notification and reporting system proposed by the bill
Lawmakers promoting the bill later made several amendments to its provisions that apparently swung the above-mentioned key players into supporting it.
Why This is Important
California is just a single state out of 50 in the United States and if this bill passes, it will generally only apply within California’s legal jurisdiction.
However, as the cradle and home for some of the world’s most influential tech companies and itself one of the most influential states in the U.S, California has a long history of passing legislation that influences policy nationally and even internationally. This applies especially in the case of technology-related laws.
If California’s government passes Bill AB 3211, it will almost certainly affect the drafting of laws at a federal U.S. level and that in turn could affect the drafting of AI-related legislation in many other countries.
