AI Frontier Institute

Artificial intelligence: transparency and governance.

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California Senate Bill 1159 (Chapter 863), signed September 30, 2026, clarifies that AI systems, autonomous agents, and robots—whether physical or digital—do not qualify as 'person,' 'interested person,' 'participant,' or 'member of the public' under California's major transparency and governance laws. Specifically, the bill amends or adds provisions to the California Public Records Act (Section 7920.520), the Legislative Open Records Act (Section 9072), the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act (new Section 11121.5), the Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking chapter (new Section 11342.575), the APA hearing chapter (new Section 11370.1.5), the APA adjudication chapter (Section 11405.70 and Section 11500), the Ralph M. Brown Act (new Section 54951.5), CEQA (Section 21066), and the California Coastal Act (Section 30111). The bill's stated rationale (Section 1) is that AI systems can submit requests or comments at scales far exceeding human capacity, which would overwhelm agencies, consume public resources, and drown out genuine human participation. New Section 8319 prohibits any person from knowingly using AI to falsely represent that a natural person appeared before, submitted information to, or otherwise engaged with a governmental agency. Under each amended provision, governmental agencies are authorized to use a disclosure verification tool meeting the criteria in Business and Professions Code Section 22757.2 to detect AI presence. The bill explicitly preserves the right of natural persons to use AI as an assistive tool to facilitate their own engagement, provided the volume and frequency remain reasonably consistent with ordinary human participation. The bill makes no appropriation and imposes no fiscal committee review.

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