California bill would ban AI tools that read employees’ emotions
California's Assembly Bill 1883, passed by lawmakers and awaiting the governor's signature, would ban employers from using AI-powered workplace-surveillance tools to collect neural data or infer employees' emotional states, with civil penalties of up to $500 per violation. The measure mirrors the EU AI Act's restrictions on emotion-recognition systems in workplaces and signals an accelerating regulatory wave that HR-tech buyers and vendors of monitoring, productivity, and biometric tools must urgently track.