On 30 September 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1883. From 1 January 2027, employers in California may no longer use AI-enabled workplace surveillance tools to infer employees' emotions, nor collect employees' neural data. The law applies only to California employers' use of such tools on employees. It bans functions that guess emotions or measure neural activity, not cameras or artificial intelligence as such.
Which two practices are banned, and which are not
Section 1581 of the Labor Code bans only two things: first, using a tool to recognise an employee's emotional state or to make inferences or predictions about it; second, collecting neural data. Neural data means information obtained by directly measuring activity in the central or peripheral nervous system; information inferred from other signals does not count. The definition of a workplace surveillance tool is broad: video and audio surveillance, continuous time tracking, location tracking and electromagnetic tracking may all fall within it. The key question is whether the tool is judging a person's emotions. Examples cited by law firms include emotion scores for customer-service calls, burnout-risk flags and EEG headbands that measure fatigue. Merely recording location, tasks and break times, without inferring emotions, is not banned; ordinary surveillance without AI is not covered by this provision either.
Three checks for employers before 1 January
First, ask vendors in writing whether a tool infers emotions from voice, video or text, or collects measurements of the nervous system, and check every emotion, engagement and stress score in product materials item by item. Second, switch off any confirmed infringing function for California employees, and record when, how and by whom it was switched off; recheck after updates, because new features or restored defaults may switch a banned function back on. Third, extend the review to customer-service quality checks, video interviews and wearables, and do not limit it to systems whose names mention surveillance. In his signing message, the Governor noted ambiguities in the bill. Where the boundary is unclear, treat the practice as banned for now and adjust when official guidance or clarifying legislation appears.
Safety exception and fines: where the boundary lies
The statute says using a surveillance tool to ensure safety is not prohibited, but lawyers disagree over whether that wording can cover emotion inference, so it must not be treated as a blanket permission to continue. The clear exemptions are narrow: they cover only the development of aircraft for use in national airspace and national security, military, space and defence work, and only where the use is reasonably necessary to comply with a federal statute, regulation or binding federal contract. Most employers will not qualify. Enforcement rests with the California Labor Commissioner and public prosecutors. Each violation may attract a penalty of up to $500, as well as injunctions and punitive damages; the statute does not say whether one violation is counted per person, per day or per tool. The statute addresses employees; whether job applicants are covered is not stated. SB 947, signed in the same package, deals with something else: automated decision systems may not alone decide discipline or dismissal, and it takes effect on 1 July 2027. See the requirements of California SB 947.
