- kind
- law
- target
- likeness
- jurisdiction
- US, California
- mechanism
- Amends California's AB 1394 social-media CSAM reporting framework (Civ. Code 3273.65-3273.67) to add AI-specific definitions and close reporting gaps. Defines 'digital forgery' as an intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction that, when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual; and 'depicted individual' as a person who is depicted, including through the use of AI, as a minor in CSAM on a social media platform. Also requires the platform's mandatory CSAM reporting mechanism to be clear and conspicuous and free of dark patterns, extends it to material sent or received through direct messaging, and eliminates the prior requirement that the reporting user be the identifiable minor depicted.
- status
- enacted-pending
- owns
- Distinct from ca-deepfake-pornography-act (a civil cause of action under Civil Code 1708.86 for adult non-consensual intimate imagery) and from ca-sb1015-online-extortion-act (a criminal extortion-specific provision) by amending the existing AB 1394 social-media-platform CSAM reporting mandate specifically to reach AI-generated or AI-altered ('digital forgery') depictions of identifiable minors, adding a direct-message reporting channel and a dark-pattern ban not present in either.
- notes
- Quote and mechanism are read directly from the official Senate Judiciary Committee analysis (May 21, 2026 version), specifically the 'This bill ... Adds or modifies the following definitions' section (page 8), not the 'Existing state law' background section that precedes it; the $250,000/$125,000/$75,000 statutory-damages figures appearing earlier in that same PDF belong to existing AB 1394 (Ch. 579, Stats. 2023) law, not to AB 1946, and are deliberately omitted here. Per search-engine-aggregated secondary sourcing (LegiScan bill-history data and an AdultFYI report), AB 1946 was chaptered as Chapter 185, Statutes of 2026, approved by the Governor September 10, 2026, with an effective date of January 1, 2027; these dates and the chapter number were not independently confirmed against the official leginfo.legislature.ca.gov bill-status page in this pass because that page timed out on repeated fetch attempts, so status is recorded as 'enacted-pending' rather than 'in-effect'. A separate report describing a flat '$250,000 per day' penalty (AdultFYI) conflicts with the analysis document's 'per violation' language for the pre-existing AB 1394 framework and is not carried into this record. Lead for a future round: footnote 1 on page 3 of this same SJUD analysis references federal bill HR 8516 (119th Cong., 2d Sess.), section 501, which would expand the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act civil action for nonconsensual sexual imagery to include 'digitally created sexual imagery, including imagery generated by AI'; this is an in-scope federal lead not independently verified here (congress.gov blocks automated fetch, consistent with the no-fakes-act-2026 entry's existing caveat).
