Joseph Gordon-Levitt is calling California Gov. Gavin Newsom “too scared” to sign a bill that would have put additional regulations on artificial intelligence, specifically involving children.
On Monday, Newsom vetoed legislation that would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to people under the age of 18 unless companies could ensure the technology couldn’t engage in sexual conversations or encourage self-harm, the Associated Press reported. The governor attributed his decision to the bill’s “broad restrictions” on AI, which “may unintentionally lead to a total ban on the use of these products by minors.”
However, he did sign a law that requires platforms to remind users they are interacting with a chatbot and not a human, as well as maintain a protocol to prevent self-harm content.
Gordon-Levitt, who has recently been outspoken about AI, took to X on Wednesday to slam Newsom, saying he’s not “telling the truth” over the bill he signed into law, which “claims to protect kids from predatory AI companions.” Instead, the actor accused the legislation of being filled with “loopholes and legal language that’s been letting Big Tech off the hook for a long time.”
“While he signed this do-nothing bill, he vetoed a good bill that really would have held Big Tech’s feet to the fire and made them change their products to be better for our kids,” the Emmy-winning actor said in a video. “But Mr. Newsom was too scared to sign it. What was he scared of, you ask? Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that just weeks before the deadline to sign or veto all these bills that could regulate AI, Big Tech: Google, Meta, OpenAI launched these huge Super PACs worth hundreds of millions of dollars aimed at attacking candidates who might regulate AI. I guess Mr. Newsom was scared that if those hundreds of millions of dollars were directed at attacking him, it might hurt his chances at winning president in a few years when he runs.”
The Inception actor continued, “It’s sad because there is a lot to like about Governor Newsom. I think he’s been doing a good job at standing up to Donald Trump and the rise of authoritarianism in this country. But you know, in my opinion, the rise of authoritarianism here and all over the world originates in large part with these algorithms. These attention-maximizing algorithms that drive the social media products and now the AI products that make so much money for these companies.”
Gordon-Levitt’s comments came shortly after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced ChatGPT would soon allow erotica for adult users. “As we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Gordon-Levitt has condemned AI. In an op-ed published by The Hollywood Reporter in July, he called out “big AI companies’ unethical business practices,” especially those targeting creatives.
“The truth is that today’s GenAI couldn’t generate anything at all without its ‘training data’ — the writing, photos, videos and other human-made things whose digital 1s and 0s get algorithmically crunched up and spit out as new,” the Killer Heat actor continued. “For more than half a decade now, AI companies have been scraping up massive amounts of this content without asking permission and without offering compensation to the people whose creations are so indispensable to this new technology.”
He added, “These tech products are not people. And our laws should not be protecting their algorithmic data-crunching the way we protect human ingenuity and hard work.”
