Jai Jaisimha, a longtime technology entrepreneur, whipped out a pack of gum from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“We as citizens know more about this pack of gum than we do about AI models,” Jaisimha said while showing the gum’s ingredients to the Washington House Technology and Economic Development Committee at a hearing last month.
Lawmakers are considering four bills on regulating artificial intelligence in Olympia this session.
State Rep. Clyde Shavers, D-Clinton, has introduced two bills that would require AI developers to provide ways for users to find out how their images are put together. Meanwhile, state senators Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, and Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, have sponsored similar bills addressing the use of AI in child porn that have been meshed into one piece of legislation. Rep. Cindy Ryu, D-Shoreline, submitted a bill that would forbid forged digital likenesses in certain situations.
“AI will shape the future of technological innovation in our state. We need to move forwards in a deliberative manner and in a collaborative manner,” Shavers said at the hearing.
While Congress is working on AI issues, committee chairwoman Ryu said that Washington cannot wait for Congress to agree on passing artificial intelligence legislation.
Meanwhile, the state agency Washington Technology Solutions published a September 2024 report on the challenges that state agencies face regarding generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which covers new text, images, videos, audio and other content that the technology can generate using existing information.
“While GenAI offers substantial benefits, it also presents challenges that need to be carefully managed,” the report said.
The report said GenAI uses include streamlining document creation, summarizing large data sets, enhancing customer service through AI chatbots, creating images and audio, assisting with coding and providing real-time language translation.
Problems include GenAI potentially creating inaccurate and misleading information and biased material. Out-of-date data is another problem. GenAI also might be out of the price range of smaller companies, the report said.
In 2024, the Legislature created a task force to recommend how the Legislature and state government should address AI issues. Its members include legislators, state officials, business interests, tribes, advocacy organizations geared toward discrimination issues, consumer and civil liberties interests, law enforcement and universities.
The first preliminary report came out in December, with one recommendation to get rid of a loophole in a 2023 law on child sexual-abuse material, which Orwall’s and Dhingra’s legislation will address.
The task force’s next preliminary report is due Dec. 1, 2025, with a final report scheduled for July 1, 2026.
Here is a rundown of the five AI bills, now reduced to four.
* House Bill 1168 would require AI developers to post documentation on the data that they used to train an AI system that is interacting with consumers. It also would set a $5,000 fine on a developer who fails to do so. Shavers introduced the bill.
The documentation, which must be made available to consumers, will include sources of the data used by the AI; whether the data was bought or licensed by the developer; whether the data uses personal information and aggregate consumer information; and whether the developer modified the data.
“It brings a much-needed transparency requirement,” Jaisimha told lawmakers at the hearing.
However, several groups registered their opposition to the bill, including the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Technology Industry Association.
The bill has no protection for trade secrets, said Rose Feliciano, executive director of TechNet’s Washington and Northwest office. TechNet is a national bipartisan network of technology CEOs and corporate officials. “This bill needs lots of work,” she said.
Robert Singleton, representing the Chamber of Progress, a national coalition of tech interests, did not come out in favor of or opposed to the bill, but warned lawmakers that disclosing this information could lead to “spurious lawsuits.”
House Bill 1170, also introduced by Shavers, requires providers of generative AI to make an AI detection tool available to users. The legislation covers AI systems used by at least 1 million people.
The tool must allow a user to assess whether an image, video or audio was created or changed by the providers of AI systems. It covers images or audio that are publicly accessible. The provider must present an interface that allows a consumer to use the tool without visiting the provider’s web site. One potential tool would allow a user to list many AI clearinghouses that a consumer can work through to check for AI.
“It goes back to transparency, to discern what is real and what isn’t,” Shavers said. Committee vice-chairwoman Rep. Shelley Kloba, D-Kirkland, said: “I worry about what is truth and what is fiction.”
However, Singleton argued that the bill might be an overreach requiring “covered entities to make available technology which simply does not exist and may not exist by the time this legislation would go into effect.”
Senate Bill 5094 and SB 5105, introduced by Dhingra and Orwall. These bills originally were essentially the same, so Dhingra then signed on to Orwall’s SB 5105.
Current Washington law makes it illegal to provide or possess AI-generated child pornography if any feature of the image can be identified as a specific child. A loophole exists if a pornographer creates an image of a child out of 100% artificial features. This bill closes that loophole by making 100% AI-generated child porn illegal. It also extends the statute of limitations on this crime from three years to 10 years.
House Bill 1205, introduced by Ryu.
It is already illegal to impersonate a law enforcement officer acting in an official capacity or someone in the military for personal gain. This bill would expand that definition to include “forged digital likenesses,” which would be defined as electronically generated visual or audio representations of a real person misrepresenting their speech or conduct and likely to deceive a “reasonable person.” The bill would make it illegal to knowingly distribute a forged digital likeness of another person as a genuine visual representation or audio recording with intent to defraud, harass, threaten, intimidate or humiliate another person or for any other unlawful purpose. This would be a gross misdemeanor.
Exempt from this proposed law is distributing visual representations or audio recordings for cultural, historical, political, religious, educational, newsworthy or public interest reasons, including works of art, commentary, satire and parody.
