The AI bill Newsom didn’t veto — AI devs must list models’ training data
The AI bill Newsom didn’t veto — AI devs must list models’ training data
California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed California’s proposed Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act in late September, fearing it would stifle “innovation.” [SB…
Despite what the tech companies say, there are absolutely techniques for identifying the sources of their data, and there are absolutely techniques for good faith data removal upon request. I know this, because I've worked on such projects before on some of the less major tech companies that make some effort to abide by European laws.
The trick is, it costs money, and the economics shift such that one must eventually begin to do things like audit and curate. The shape and size of your business, plus how you address your markets, gains nuance that doesn't work when your entire business model is smooth, mindless amotirizing of other people's data.
But I don't envy these tech companies, or the increasing absurd stories they must tell to hide the truth. A handsome sword hangs above their heads.
The other reason they don't do it is because many models are trained on a large corpus of pirated texts, and documenting this would be a confession.
Not just in an 'I scraped the new york times without permission' kind of way, but in a 'I illegally downloaded a torrent containing bestsellers from the last 30 years' kind of way.
Wouldn't removal of the data effect on the model require a basic retraining? A bit too late for all the open source ones out there.
That's a good question, because there is nuance here! It's interesting because while working on similar projects I also ran into this issue. First off, it's important to understand what your obligation is and the way that you can understand data deletion. No one believes it is necessary to permanently remove all copies of anything, anymore than it is necessary to prevent all forms of plagairism. No one is complaining that is possible at all to plaigarise, we're complaining that major institutions are continuing to do so with ongoing disregard of the law.
Only maximalists fall into the trap that thinking of the world in binary sense: either all in or do nothing at all.
For most of us, it's about economics and risk profiles. Open source models get trained continuously over time, there won't be one version. Saying that open source operators do have some obligations to in good faith to curate future training to comply has a long tail impact on how that model evolves. Previous PII or plaigarized data might still exist, but its value and novelty and relevance to economic life goes down sharply over time. No artist or writer argues that copyright protections need to exist forever. They literally, just need to have survival working conditions, and the respect for attribution. The same thing with PII: no one claims that they must be completely anonymous. They just desire cyber crime to be taken seriously rather than abandoned in favor of one party taking the spoils of their personhood.
Also, yes, there are algorithms that can control how further learning promotes or demotes growth and connections relative to various policies. Rather than saying that any one policy is perfect, a mere willingness to adopt policies in good faith (most such LLM filters are intentionally weak so that those with $$ and paying for API access can outright ignore them, while they can turn around and claim it can't be solved too bad so sad).
Yes. It is possible to perturb and influence the evolution of a continuously trained neural network based on external policy, and they're carefully lying through omision when they say they can't 100% control it or 100% remove things. Fine. That's, not necessary, neither in copyright nor privacy law. Never been.
2026
Not soon enough. I'd be happy if they were forced to list it right the fuck now.
yeah, this sounds like a concession to the industry
i'd be surprised if any of that horseshit is left standing by the end of 2025
Newsom also signed AB 1008, which clarifies that any personal data fed to an AI model retains the same privacy rights it would otherwise — including the consumer’s right to correct and delete their personal information. That’ll be a fun one to implement.
I think what it actually clarified is that personal information generated from an AI model are now covered under the law, instead of just what is used as training data.