{"id":154751,"date":"2026-08-28T19:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T19:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/154751\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T19:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T19:28:12","slug":"california-lawmakers-move-to-crack-down-on-ai-used-for-public-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/154751\/","title":{"rendered":"California lawmakers move to crack down on AI used for public comment."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

California lawmakers have passed legislation that will make it easier for government agencies to protect themselves from the rising use of artificial intelligence for public comment, records requests and other forms of civic engagement. <\/p>\n

Senate Bill 1159<\/a> from Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento) prohibits anyone from knowingly using AI to falsely represent that a real person engaged with a government agency. It also specifies that agencies are not required to treat engagement from AI or bots as if they were real humans. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have seen with the result of the advent of artificial intelligence and other similar technologies is the capability for these systems to flood the zone \u2014 to drown local governments, and potentially state agencies as well, in inauthentic, non-human engagement\u201d Cabaldon said during a March meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

The legislation was introduced shortly after a February report<\/a> from The Times about a campaign to sway a vote on gas-powered appliances at the South Coast Air Quality Management District. A Southern California based public affairs consultant named Matt Klink took credit for the campaign<\/a>, stating that he used a platform called CiviClick to flood the district with 20,000 public comments opposing the rule ahead of the air board\u2019s vote. <\/p>\n

CiviClick describes itself on its website<\/a> as \u201cthe first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.\u201d Company officials maintain that AI was not used in the AQMD campaign, but said it is a tool they offer and use in other campaigns. Chief executive Chazz Clevinger said he could not share how the 20,000 comments to the air board were generated or how constituents were identified and contacted. <\/p>\n

Agency insiders said the onslaught of emails almost certainly influenced the air board\u2019s decision to reject the proposed rules<\/a>, which would have imposed fees on new gas-powered furnaces and water heaters for some 10 million appliances across the South Coast region. <\/p>\n

Cabaldon cited The Times story when he introduced the legislation, noting that at least three people contacted by the air district said they had not submitted the public comments attached to their names.<\/p>\n

He also cited a report from the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a> about a similar campaign to sway a different rule at the Bay Area Management District, which was run through a platform called Speak4 that advertises its ability to produce custom AI-powered letters. <\/p>\n

The business advocacy group that ran the campaign also denied that AI was used. However, 10 people contacted by The Chronicle said they had not written the letters attributed to them. \u201cThis was forged,\u201d one person said. <\/p>\n

Reached by phone, Cabaldon said the legislation will help public agencies navigate how to respond to the deployment of AI, which is increasingly being used in a way that \u201cswamps our civic engagement process, but also disables our state and local governments altogether.\u201d <\/p>\n

For example, the California Public Records Act requires government agencies to respond to requests for public records within 10 days, while the Brown Act and the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act guarantee the right to participate in public meetings and provide public comment. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe point of the bill is to say that these laws are about humans, and just because it comes in the form that a human would write it, does not mean you have to treat each of these communications as if it\u2019s a human being, and therefore, AI is not entitled to 10 days, AI is not entitled to three minutes at the school board meeting,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Experts said the use of AI for \u201castroturfing,\u201d or faking, civic engagement is a growing trend. In the United Kingdom, a service called Objector.ai is using AI to identify and generate formal objections to local planning applications, garnering the concern of experts, The Guardian reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Public officials in California are worried, too. Vacaville vice mayor Michael Silva said the city has been receiving AI-generated public records requests, which are slowing its ability to respond to other legitimate requests submitted by residents.<\/p>\n

Dylan Plummer, deputy director of the Sierra Club\u2019s Clean Heat Campaign, said many AI campaigns have benefited the fossil fuel industry and pose an \u201cexistential threat to public participation in our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe passage of Senate Bill 1159 is an important step to clarify the law and discourage the use of emerging technologies to falsify public records and mislead regulators in California,\u201d he said. \u201cThat said, much work still needs to be done to understand how widespread this practice is, and to hold bad actors accountable for laws that may have already been broken.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lawmakers acknowledged that the legislation is just a start, and that it is increasingly difficult for public officials to detect bespoke letters, deepfake videos or other kinds of engagement powered by AI. The bill authorizes government agencies to use disclosure verification tools to determine if AI is present \u2014 something the Bay Area Air District already indicated it may do by replacing its email system with a website for public comment submissions instead. <\/p>\n

The legislation does not preclude real people from using AI to facilitate genuine public engagement, such as someone using ChatGPT or Perplexity to improve the text of a letter, so long as the volume and frequency of their engagement are consistent with ordinary participation from a real person. <\/p>\n

For its part, CiviClick notes on its website that it supports SB 1159, and said its platform already complies with what the bill proposes. <\/p>\n

Some lawmakers said the use of AI in a civic capacity represents a new frontier. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019d have read this bill back when I was on the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, I would have wondered what you were smoking,\u201d Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) said during the March meeting of the Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s how things have progressed, and the development of technology will always outpace the development of defenses against the undesirable effects of technology,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

SB 1159 passed the legislature this month and will head to Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s desk for signature in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California lawmakers have passed legislation that will make it easier for government agencies to protect themselves from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,75280,66636,1235,32650,75279,10814,75277,7524,33,801,14831,75278,75276,5221],"class_list":["post-154751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cabaldon","tag-california-lawmaker","tag-campaign","tag-civic-engagement","tag-civiclick","tag-engagement","tag-government-agency","tag-legislation","tag-letter","tag-platform","tag-public-comment","tag-public-record","tag-senate-bill","tag-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}