California lawmakers have taken great strides in the past year to regulate generative artificial intelligence (AI), setting a high bar in the global efforts to reign in the rapidly advancing technology.
In late 2025, Gov. Newsom signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, or Senate Bill (SB) 53, a pioneering state law requiring AI companies to disclose safety protocols and the mitigation of potential risks. Additionally, the legislation also established a system for users to flag safety concerns.
This is just one in an intensive list of the many AI-directed laws passed by California, including requirements that popular AI systems provide tools to help users detect and identify the content.
Jadie Sun, a computer science teacher at Carlmont High School, cites this as a significant, albeit insufficient, step in the process of integrating AI into daily life.
“It’s hard because lawmakers, like everyone else, have bias, so sometimes things aren’t made for improvement purposes and might be for profit,” Sun said.
Overall, public opinion states that the laws established in California are sufficiently mindful of the fact that Silicon Valley is home to many of the leading developers in technology, but some concern has arisen about limiting the competitiveness of such companies if further legislation is added.
“I think it’s worth having laws and policies to prevent people from using generative AI to cause harm to others,” said Melinda Nelson, a sophomore at Carlmont.
In the global context, California is a strong advocate for establishing regulation. Governments around the world, however, are also taking their own initiative.
In South Korea, for example, lawmakers enacted an innovative “AI Basic Act” that took effect in January 2026. This makes them one of the first to implement an entire legal framework in the context of AI. The core requirements of the act are to have human oversight around AI usage in fields like medicine, transportation, and finance, as well as requiring labels for AI-generated content.
Unlike the detailed, sector-specific legislation seen in California, Korea is experiencing a more unified legal framework. Supporting laws are expected to reinforce the overall direction taken by the government.
Chenxi Lin, a senior at Carlmont, expresses a different opinion on the tight restrictions placed on AI companies.
“It is not practical to regulate the usage of generative AI, as it should be more of something organizations and platforms enforce. However, the development of generative AI could use some regulation,” Lin said.
California’s recent legislation reflects that distinction, focusing on oversight of advanced AI companies rather than policing how consumers use the resulting tools.
Lawmakers in Indonesia have taken a different approach in the context of AI misuse.
Recent actions taken in January of this year have resulted in temporarily blocked access to Grok, the xAI chatbot, after it was used to create sexually explicit imagery in ways that circumvented national laws against obscene content.
This struggle ties into the balancing act experienced by every government around the globe: how to protect privacy and safety without getting in the way of innovation, and how to ensure accountability in a technology that can easily generate realistic content with little to no oversight.
Lin points out that, among the exploitative functions of this technology, it is still a useful tool.
“It’s been really helpful in writing for proofreading and giving feedback, and generally acting as a beta reader,” Lin said.
Such everyday applications help explain why regulation is focused on overseeing AI development rather than attempting to restrict individual users.
Many believe lawmakers must keep this in mind going forward, as they continue to grapple with a quickly developing technology that has embedded itself in the lives of millions of users.
