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Law / United States / California

Workplace Surveillance Tools: AI Emotion Recognition and Neural Data Prohibition (AB 1883)

Cal. Lab. Code Sections 1580 to 1583 (AB 1883, Ch. 853, Stats. 2026)

An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.

Obligation class
Prohibition

As of .

What it requires

  • This binds any employer, meaning a person or governmental entity that employs or exercises control over the wages, hours, or working conditions of any person, including state and local government bodies and labor contractors
  • Do not use a workplace surveillance tool that uses artificial intelligence on employees to recognize, or make inferences or predictions about, an individual's emotional state
  • Do not use a workplace surveillance tool that uses artificial intelligence on employees to collect neural data, meaning information generated by measuring the activity of an employee's central or peripheral nervous system that is not inferred from nonneural information

These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text, as of .

In the frameworks

NIST AI RMF
  • MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
NIST AI 600-1
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 1.5Safety Decision Frameworks
  • 3.3Access Management
NIST Privacy Framework
  • CT.PO-P1Policies, processes, and procedures for authorizing data processing (e.g., organizational decisions, individual consent), revoking authorizations, and maintaining authorizations are established and in place.
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.2-1Business need and security risks written down and assessed before deciding to build an AI system.
  • 5.1.4-5End-users told which uses of the system are prohibited.

Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law

Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.

If you get it wrong

Penalty structure

Cal. Lab. Code section 1582(d)(1): an employer who violates the part may be subject to a penalty of up to $500 for each violation, which is a ceiling and not a fixed sum. Under section 1582(d)(2) an employee, the Labor Commissioner, or a public prosecutor may recover the penalty as a statutory penalty paid to the employee or as a civil penalty, but not both, for the same violation.

Rule
Per violation only
As of
Currency
USD
Per violation unit
Violation
Per violation amount
500

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

The Labor Commissioner, who may investigate, order temporary relief, issue citations, and file civil actions, and public prosecutors.

What this law does

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

AB 1883 was chaptered on as Chapter 853 of the Statutes of 2026. An employer shall not use a workplace surveillance tool that uses artificial intelligence on employees to recognize, or make inferences or predictions about, an individual's emotional state, or to collect neural data. Neural data is information generated by measuring the activity of an employee's central or peripheral nervous system that is not inferred from nonneural information.

An employer is a person or governmental entity that directly or indirectly employs or exercises control over the wages, hours, or working conditions of any person, and includes state and local government bodies and labor contractors. The prohibition does not stop an employer from using a workplace surveillance tool to ensure safety, or otherwise if it does not meet those specifications.

The Labor Commissioner may enforce the part, including by issuing a citation or filing a civil action, and a public prosecutor may also enforce it. An employer who violates the part may be subject to a penalty of up to $500 for each violation.

The part does not prohibit use of a workplace surveillance tool relating to the development of aircraft for use in the national airspace or of products or services for national security, military, space, or defense purposes, and only where the use is reasonably necessary to comply with a federal statute, federal regulation, or binding federal contract.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app processes biometric data, processes voice recordings or records calls.

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