• A California bill passed on Sunday would prohibit employers in the state from using artificial intelligence tools that surveil an employee’s individual emotional state or collect an employee’s “neural data.”
• The text of Assembly Bill No. 1883, or AB 1883, defines neural data to include information generated by measuring the activity of an employee’s central or peripheral nervous system that is not inferred from nonneural information. It contains a broad list of covered AI tools including those used to generate outputs that influence either physical or virtual environments.
• AB 1883 would not prohibit employers from using workplace surveillance tools broadly, and the law would permit the use of such tools to ensure safety. Violators would be subject to a per-violation penalty of $500. The law also exempts operations related to the development of certain aircraft and products for national security, military, space or defense purposes.

Dive Insight:

The legislation addresses an area of growing interest among HR technologists. Workplace emotional monitoring via AI is a controversial topic, however, and its use has already been prohibited by the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which took effect in August 2024.

One example of a similar tech deployment made headlines earlier this year, when the fast food chain Burger King announced the rollout of its “Patty” AI assistant. The software, which is integrated into employees’ headsets, can identify when employees use phrases...

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