California SB 942: the Free Provenance Detection Tool

California Senate Bill 942, also known as the Free Provenance Detection Tool law, was enacted in 2024. The law aims to create and operate a public service that determines if a system generated a file uploaded by a stranger. The bill focuses on building and maintaining a product, not merely adding a metadata field, which requires engineering effort.

SB 942 is applicable to providers who generate AI systems accessible to the public in California and exceed a monthly user threshold of one million. Below that threshold, the law does not apply, making the number of covered providers relatively small.

The law mandates the creation of a detection tool that is free and publicly accessible. It must not be free for customers or behind a sign-up. The tool should accept content and provide an assessment of whether the content was generated or altered by the provider's system. The output must include system provenance data, such as the provider's name, the system's name and version, and the time and date the content was created or altered.

The tool should support an application programming interface (API), enabling the check to be performed by another service rather than manually.

The detection duty is separate from the disclosure duty and has its own list of acceptance criteria, including being free and publicly accessible, not outputting personal provenance data, and providing a confidence-bearing answer. The tool's response depends on the input's condition, with a high-confidence answer if the system's manifest survives and a probability-based answer if not. The law also requires revoking licenses from third parties that modify the system and remove required disclosures within 96 hours.