Lawmakers are contemplating 4 payments on regulating artificial intelligence in Olympia this session.
State Rep. Clyde Shavers, D-Clinton, has launched two payments that may require AI builders to supply methods for customers to learn the way their pictures are put collectively. In the meantime, state senators Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, and Tina Wells, D-Des Moines, have sponsored related payments addressing the usage of AI in baby porn which were meshed into one piece of laws. Rep. Cindy Ryu, D-Shoreline, submitted a invoice that may forbid solid digital likenesses in sure conditions.
“AI will form the way forward for technological innovation in our state. We have to transfer forwards in a deliberative method and in a collaborative method,” Shavers mentioned on the listening to.
Whereas Congress is engaged on AI points, committee chairwoman Ryu mentioned that Washington can not look forward to Congress to agree on passing artificial intelligence laws.
In the meantime, the state company Washington Expertise Options printed a September 2024 report on the challenges that state companies face relating to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which covers new textual content, pictures, movies, audio and different content material that the know-how can generate utilizing current info.
“Whereas GenAI provides substantial advantages, it additionally presents challenges that must be rigorously managed,” the report mentioned.
The report mentioned GenAI makes use of embody streamlining doc creation, summarizing massive information units, enhancing customer support by means of AI chatbots, creating pictures and audio, helping with coding and offering real-time language translation.
Issues embody GenAI doubtlessly creating inaccurate and deceptive info and biased materials. Out-of-date information is one other downside. GenAI additionally could be out of the value vary of smaller corporations, the report mentioned.
In 2024, the Legislature created a activity power to suggest how the Legislature and state authorities ought to handle AI points. Its members embody legislators, state officers, enterprise pursuits, tribes, advocacy organizations geared towards discrimination points, shopper and civil liberties pursuits, regulation enforcement and universities.
The first preliminary report got here out in December, with one suggestion to do away with a loophole in a 2023 regulation on baby sexual-abuse materials, which Orwell’s and Dhingra’s laws will handle.
The duty power’s subsequent preliminary report is due Dec. 1, 2025, with a ultimate report scheduled for July 1, 2026.
Here’s a rundown of the 5 AI payments, now lowered to 4.
* House Bill 1168 would require AI builders to publish documentation on the information that they used to coach an AI system that’s interacting with customers. It additionally would set a $5,000 superb on a developer who fails to take action. Shavers launched the invoice.
The documentation, which have to be made obtainable to customers, will embody sources of the information utilized by the AI; whether or not the information was purchased or licensed by the developer; whether or not the information makes use of private info and combination shopper info; and whether or not the developer modified the information.
“It brings a much-needed transparency requirement,” Jaisimha instructed lawmakers on the listening to.
Nonetheless, a number of teams registered their opposition to the invoice, together with the Affiliation of Washington Enterprise and the Washington Expertise Trade Affiliation.
The invoice has no safety for commerce secrets and techniques, mentioned Rose Feliciano, govt director of TechNet’s Washington and Northwest workplace. TechNet is a nationwide bipartisan community of know-how CEOs and company officers. “This invoice wants numerous work,” she mentioned.
Robert Singleton, representing the Chamber of Progress, a nationwide coalition of tech pursuits, didn’t come out in favor of or against the invoice, however warned lawmakers that disclosing this info might result in “spurious lawsuits.”
House Bill 1170, additionally launched by Shavers, requires suppliers of generative AI to make an AI detection device obtainable to customers. The laws covers AI programs utilized by at the least 1 million folks.
The device should permit a person to evaluate whether or not a picture, video or audio was created or modified by the suppliers of AI programs. It covers pictures or audio which might be publicly accessible. The supplier should current an interface that permits a shopper to make use of the device with out visiting the supplier’s website online. One potential device would permit a person to listing many AI clearinghouses {that a} shopper can work by means of to examine for AI.
“It goes again to transparency, to discern what’s actual and what isn’t,” Shavers mentioned. Committee vice-chairwoman Rep. Shelley Kloba, D-Kirkland, mentioned: “I fear about what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
Nonetheless, Singleton argued that the invoice could be an overreach requiring “lined entities to make obtainable know-how which merely doesn’t exist and should not exist by the point this laws would go into impact.”
Senate Bill 5094 and SB 5105, launched by Dhingra and Orwell. These payments initially had been primarily the identical, so Dhingra then signed on to Orwell’s SB 5105.
Present Washington regulation makes it unlawful to supply or possess AI-generated baby pornography if any function of the picture could be recognized as a selected baby. A loophole exists if a pornographer creates a picture of a kid out of 100% artificial options. This invoice closes that loophole by making 100% AI-generated baby porn unlawful. It additionally extends the statute of limitations on this crime from three years to 10 years.
House Bill 1205, launched by Ryu.
It’s already unlawful to impersonate a regulation enforcement officer appearing in an official capability or somebody within the army for private achieve. This invoice would increase that definition to incorporate “solid digital likenesses,” which might be outlined as electronically generated visible or audio representations of an actual particular person misrepresenting their speech or conduct and prone to deceive a “affordable particular person.” The invoice would make it unlawful to knowingly distribute a solid digital likeness of one other particular person as a real visible illustration or audio recording with intent to defraud, harass, threaten, intimidate or humiliate one other particular person or for another illegal function. This is able to be a gross misdemeanor.
Exempt from this proposed regulation is distributing visible representations or audio recordings for cultural, historic, political, non secular, academic, newsworthy or public curiosity causes, together with artworks, commentary, satire and parody.