New California Laws Regulating Privacy and Artificial Intelligence
Topics: AI in the Workplace, Privacy
In September, Gavin Newsom signed a host of new legislation into law, including two bills – AB 3030 and SB 1223, designed to help regulate health data and generative AI in the healthcare space.
SB 1223 is a less highlighted bill that simply modifies the California Consumer Privacy Act’s (CCPA) definition of sensitive personal information to now include “neural data,” also known as “information generated by measuring the activity of a consumer central or peripheral nervous system, and that is not inferred from nonneural information.” Essentially, this bill expands the protections for individual’s private health care data by adding protections for neural data, which is information received directly from a person’s body.
The second bill, AB 3030, seeks to regulate generative AI which is a form of AI that “can generate derived synthetic content, including images, videos, audio, text, and other digital content.” Essentially, this type of AI is trained to create new data. This new bill seeks to strike a balance in the healthcare field by allowing the use of generative AI while also putting protective measures in place. The bill’s author believes that generative AI in healthcare can help transform medical research, patient care, and diagnosis.
This bill applies only to health facilities, clinics, physician’s offices, or offices of group practice that utilize this technology to create verbal or written patient communications about patient’s clinical information.
If one of the designated facilities utilizes this technology, it must include a disclaimer to inform the patient that the communication was created using generative AI. Not only is the use of a disclaimer required, but the communication must also include clear instructions on how a patient can contact a human health care provider or employee of the applicable facility. The only exception to needing the disclosure and clear instructions is if the communication prepared by the generative AI is read and reviewed by a human licensed or certified health care provider. This bill’s purpose appears to be that patients understand that these messages, whether audio, visual, or written, are created by generative AI and not a real person. This bill follows the trend of creating more regulations and transparency surrounding the use and implementation of AI.
Overall, AB 3030 follows the recent trends of creating new regulations surrounding the use of AI.
