What to Know About California’s Executive Order on A.I.

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What to Know About California’s Executive Order on A.I.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued an order requiring safety and privacy guardrails for artificial intelligence companies contracting with the state.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom. California has been a leader in tech lawmaking, and was the first state to pass a law mandating safety and transparency from the biggest A.I. companies.

Credit...

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

By

Cecilia Kang

Reporting from Washington.

March 30, 2026,

5:45 p.m. ET

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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Monday issued a

first-of-its-kind executive order

requiring safety and privacy guardrails from artificial intelligence companies that contract with the state.

California has been a leader in tech lawmaking, and was the first state to

pass a law mandating safety and transparency

from the biggest A.I. companies. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, signed the order partly as a message to President Trump, who has been trying to bat down state attempts to regulate A.I.

Here’s what’s in his executive order.

Contractor Vetting

Companies vying for government contracts will first have to explain their safety and privacy policies around A.I. The state will look carefully at policies on how the companies prevent exploitation of individuals, including the spread of child sexual abuse materials.

The government will also consider whether A.I. models, the technology that powers chatbots and other tools, are used to monitor individuals or are used to block certain speech. Companies should also explain how they are avoiding bias in their systems.

Independence From Federal Contracting Standards

If the federal government designates a company a supply chain risk, which the

Pentagon has recently done with the A.I. start-up Anthropic

, California will independently conduct its own assessment. If the company isn’t determined to be a risk, the state may allow the company to continue on as a contractor.

This is significant because the Pentagon’s legal tussle with Anthropic, which had provided the Defense Department with A.I. technologies for use on classified systems, has exposed a rift in the administration’s pursuit of A.I. for war use. The Pentagon terminated its contract with Anthropic after the company said the government couldn’t use its models for mass surveillance and the deployment of autonomous weaponry.

Watermarking Requirement

The governor also called on state officials to begin watermarking A.I.-generated or manipulated videos that they create.

The technique is aimed at guarding against the spread of misinformation. It would also allow consumers to tell the difference between human-generated and A.I.-generated images produced by the state.

Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.

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