The laws – Assembly Bill 1331, Assembly Bill 1883 and Senate Bill 947 – were signed into law by Gavin Newsom, governor of California, on 30^th September and take effect on 1^st January 2027.

For AB 1331, the Insights Association had raised concerns that the bill, which was intended to restrict worker surveillance, would have also restricted observation of research subjects who receive incentives, because the bill included independent contractors in its definition of a worker.

The law was altered to only restrict monitoring or observation in bathrooms, a limited situation that should not impede insights studies.

AB 1883 also concerned workplace surveillance and would have prohibited the collection of data, activities, biometrics or behaviours by any means except direct observation by a person to make inferences about someone’s emotional state or sentiment, collect neural data, or infer a wide variety of demographic data.

The amendment removed independent contractors from the bill, which the Insights Association said should mean there is minimal impact on the insights industry.

The final law, SB 947, would have banned AI or automation-derived inferences of common demographic data regarding any research subject receiving an incentive, or predictive behaviour analysis of such research subjects.

The bill would also have restricted automated decision-making systems involved in terminating or removing such research subjects from a study or panel, and required human review and investigation. The amendment removed independent contractors.

Howard Fienberg, senior vice-president advocacy at the Insights Association, said: “All three of these bills, before amendment, would have restricted or outright prohibited basic practices of market research, insights and data analytics.

“All of it would have been on top of the existing California Consumer Privacy Act and other privacy requirements and AI restrictions in the Golden State, and hurt a much broader range of companies and organisations.”