California Getting Close to Passing Porn Site Age Verification Law

• Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
• Fact-Checked by

The California State Assembly’s new Act, Assembly Bill 3080 , mandates that porn websites available in the state verify the age of their users. The bill received unanimous support on May 16, passing the Assembly floor with 65 out of 80 “yes” votes and zero “no” votes. Fifteen Assembly members abstained from voting.

The bill still requires the Senate and Governor’s approval. If enacted, California will become the seventeenth US state to approve age verification on adult sites since Louisiana first did in 2022.

Bill 3080 (or the Parent’s Accountability and Child Protection Act) will require adult sites to take “reasonable steps” to verify that visitors from the state are 18 or older. Methods could include sharing non-prepaid credit card information or government-issued IDs that contain the name, age, description, and picture of the person with the site.

To safeguard individual privacy, the bill specifies that any collected data must ensure user anonymity and refrain from creating a record of the user’s online activity.

This law also applies to companies and individuals selling adult products like fireworks, BB guns, body branding, and e-cigarettes. California State Assemblymembers Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and Juan Alanis back the legislation, stating that the bill is not intended to harm the adult industry or its workers. Instead, its focus is on protecting children from harmful exposure to explicit content online.

However, various advocacy groups and porn companies continue to rally against these age verification laws. During the state judiciary committee hearing, advocacy groups argued that such laws would drive people to visit other sites that don’t comply with the state’s regulations, especially since major porn sites have simply stopped operating in Texas and other states as a result of these age verification requirements.

Allison Bowden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade group for the porn industry, informed the judiciary committee that in states with the age-verification requirement, less than 1% of porn site users actually complete the process.

“What they do, according to our data, is hit the back button and find a site that doesn’t comply with the law,” she said. Quoting an internal study, Bowden said that “since the Texas law took effect in September, [..] traffic to a very large overseas site that openly defies all US laws grew 55%. Traffic to a site that hosts ‘leaked’ videos without verifying the age or identity of the people depicted in them grew 1,500%.”

Bowden also questioned the effectiveness of online ID verification, especially given the ease of creating fake IDs with artificial intelligence. Instead, she suggested using phone-enabled age verification as an alternative, a method also supported by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan and executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, Iain Corby .

Google’s AI Overviews Gains Embarrassing Reputation Among Users

• Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
• Fact-Checked by

Google Search users have been getting weird and fake information since the company rolled out the new AI Overviews feature last week. The new update, a new custom Gemini model launched in the United States on May 14 , aims to show users “helpful” information when they type a query on Google Search, but a few results have been surprisingly inaccurate and have gone viral on social media.

A user shared on X the results of their query “cheese not sticking to pizza”, and AI Overviews provided an answer that suggests adding “about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.” The post went viral, and users discovered that the information used by the generative AI came from an 11-year-old post on Reddit.

It has recently been confirmed that Google and OpenAI have partnerships with Reddit to feed their AI models, raising a comprehensive concern over the information being massively spread. Other users have discovered more untrustworthy or parody sources used by AI Overviews as reliable sites, like the satirical online publication The Onion. When someone asked about the rocks they should eat, AI Overviews recommended “at least one small rock per day.”

Hundreds of funny answers and memes have been shared in the past few days, affecting the company’s reputation for providing accurate, helpful information. And unfortunate timing, considering Google recently announced its new AI model, hoping to compete against ChatGPT .

Google’s Response

Google shared a document yesterday, AI Overviews: About Last Week , recognizing the “odd” overviews and providing an explanation of why this happened.

“AI Overviews generally don’t ‘hallucinate’ or make things up in the ways that other LLM products might. When AI Overviews get it wrong, it’s usually for other reasons: misinterpreting queries, misinterpreting a nuance of language on the web, or not having a lot of great information available,” states the article.

The tech company explained that its experts have tested the new features and considered common queries, but opening the service to millions of users in the United States resulted in novel and unexpected searches.

Google also seemed to blame users for testing the intelligence’s limits. “We’ve also seen nonsensical new searches, seemingly aimed at producing erroneous results,” reads the announcement. It added that not all the viral images were real and that “there have been a large number of faked screenshots shared widely.”

Google acknowledged that it needs to improve the AI tool and assured that actions have already been taken, like “limiting the inclusion of satire and humor content” and limiting the use of user-generated content in responses. They’ve also removed the feature for news and health content “where freshness and factuality are important.”