AI workplace surveillance in California can no longer read how a worker feels or what’s happening in their nervous system. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1883 on September 30, prohibiting employers from using artificial intelligence tools to infer employees’ emotional states or collect their neural data, whether through video monitoring, wearables, or biometric headsets.
At a glance
- What’s banned: Employers in California can no longer use AI-powered tools to infer employees’ emotional states or collect neural data from their nervous system.
- Penalties: Violations carry civil penalties of up to $500 each, enforced by the state labor commissioner and public prosecutors.
- Effective date: The law takes effect January 1, 2027, giving employers a few months to remove or reconfigure covered monitoring tools.
What the law actually covers
AB 1883 targets two specific capabilities, not workplace monitoring broadly. It bars AI systems from recognizing or making inferences about a worker’s emotional state, and separately bars AI from collecting neural data, meaning information generated to measure activity in the central or peripheral nervous system, according to Bloomberg Law. The restrictions apply to video and audio monitoring, continuous time-trackers, geolocation tools, and electromagnetic tracking devices, if those tools use AI for either purpose.
Consumer-grade devices that read brain activity already exist in headsets, earbuds, and wearables marketed for focus and fatigue tracking, and the obvious workplace use case is monitoring alertness in safety-critical jobs, according to reporting on the bill. The law explicitly does not prohibit AI surveillance used to ensure safety, so employers can still justify monitoring tools tied to a specific, documented safety risk.
One of several AI worker protections signed the same day
Newsom signed AB 1883 alongside related measures the same day, including a law requiring employers to give written notice when AI drives mass layoffs and a ban on employers relying on AI alone to fire a worker, according to coverage of the signing. “AI should expand opportunity — not come at the expense of workers and families,” Newsom said in a statement. “As this technology reshapes the workplace, California is putting people at the center.”
The bill passed the Assembly on August 30 as part of a slate of 30 AI-related bills considered in the 2026 session, part of a broader wave of economic justice wins moving through state legislatures nationwide.
What the law doesn’t settle
AB 1883 is narrower than an earlier, broader worker-AI protection bill that Newsom vetoed in 2025, which would have required disclosure of AI-based automated decision systems and barred AI from disciplining workers more generally. Earlier drafts of AB 1883 itself were also broader, at one point covering independent contractors and regulating facial recognition in disciplinary decisions, before lawmakers narrowed the final version, according to the California Employment Law Update.
In his signing statement, Newsom asked legislators to further clarify the law’s scope, alongside a related measure restricting employer surveillance in workplace restrooms, a sign that even the final, narrowed version leaves real interpretive questions for employers and regulators to work out.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Bloomberg Law
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Right to repair laws introduced in all 50 U.S. states
- The Good News for Humankind archive on workers’ rights and well-being
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