AB 316 — Defendant in a Civil Lawsuit Cannot Shift Liability to AI

AB 316 provides that in a civil lawsuit, a defendant who developed, modified, or used artificial intelligence (AI) that is alleged to have caused harm to the plaintiff cannot assert as a defense that the AI autonomously caused the harm to the plaintiff. In other words, the bill establishes that it is the user of AI, not the technology itself, that may be liable under civil law for harm that results from AI. Employers may therefore be liable for discrimination or other harms that a plaintiff employee or applicant alleges were the result of an AI tool.

The bill defines AI as an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments.

(AB 316 adds Section 1714.46 to the Civil Code.)