Gutierrez asks Asato on possible guardrails and Gonzalez on company testimony

Thank you.

Senator from London, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.

I apologize.

Thank you for your testimony and for educating us on the volatility of this tech company.

I know you're in process right now, but could you share a little bit about legislatively what you think, if existed, if in place,

a guardrail, what could have in any way prevented what happened.

been to you?

How can we, whether the state or the city, legislate specifically to objectifying and potentially images that include sexual harm to people?

What have you learned or have you seen that we can potentially legislate?

And then I just had one more question for Senator Gonzalez.

I love hearing you talk about your disdain for data centers.

Can you share for a minute afterwards just what you were feeling hearing some of these tech companies during their testimony.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your question.

I'll try to be brief.

Within the UK, we already have data protection and privacy laws, which is the basis under which I'm bringing my claim.

And of course, we're going to test that in court.

But clearly, if your image and your likeness forms part of your data,

the making sure that everybody has that aspect understood by AI companies could mean that they would then have to treat our likeness and our data differently in future.

But also the UK government has recently made the sort of generation of non-consensual intimate imagery a criminal offence and as part of that

has brought the operation of AI chatbots into our online safety act so that our regulator Ofcom can also make sure that if

an AI company is allowing users to create non-consensual intimate imagery, that that is a criminal sort of act happening on their platform.

And so it gives it more of an ability to be taken down.

But from my own perspective, it's about consent.

In the end, whether it is non-consensual intimate imagery or just non-consensual imagery,

If we haven't consented to it, then it shouldn't be allowed to do it.

I just want to interject and thank you so much for coming.

I mean, to...

come, you know, as far as you travel to be here personally to testify, it really means a lot to us and we deeply appreciate it.

And thank you so much.

Again, I think this is a great segue to the fact that there are international safety standards.

So much of the work that I've done has been to call out the fact that there are not only standards like ISO 42001

or national standards like the RISC-AI framework that these companies could comply with, but actively lobby against bills that would require them to.

And to the council member's question and what I was feeling, I was feeling so much of the same frustration that my colleagues on this panel expressed earlier.

These companies are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

On the one hand, they'll say that they want regulation, but any time a single bill that would meaningfully hold them to account is brought in front of them, they will say, but not like that.

When we talk about catastrophic risks, many of the bills that have been put forward, and even what the state had passed, for example, had set definitions at 100 deaths or billions of dollars of damage.

Even that was considered too low of a threshold for many of these AI companies.

And bills like the one that I mentioned that protects our kids, that seeks to say that a single kid being coached to commit suicide, which has actively happened in multiple...

cases across the country, is one kid too many, is considered unacceptable to these tech companies.

So I feel an incredible amount of frustration while I feel an incredible amount of hope seeing you not only have this hearing, but all of us as legislators step up to meet the moment and regulate and rein in these tech companies.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Deputy Speaker Williams, followed by Councilmember Hanif and then Maloney.