Executive Order N-12-23 (generative artificial intelligence: risk assessment and guidelines for state use)

Record US-CA-11 · Executive Order N-12-23

Issued by: Governor of California (Gavin Newsom)
Jurisdiction: California (US)
Level · region: Sub-national · North America
Country: United States
Published / adopted: 2023-09-06
In force: 2023-09-06
Language: English
Official identifier: Executive Order N-12-23

Summary

Sets how California state government studies, guards against and uses generative AI (GenAI). It orders a report on beneficial use cases and risks, focused on high-risk uses such as consequential decisions on access to essential goods and services; a joint risk analysis of GenAI threats to critical energy infrastructure, including those that could lead to mass casualty events, with recommendations on testing, monitoring and keeping systems under effective human control; guidelines for public-sector procurement, use and training covering safety, algorithmic discrimination, privacy and notice of GenAI content; an inventory of high-risk uses; and sandboxes for pilots.

Safety topics

public-sector usecritical infrastructurecatastrophic riskhuman oversighttransparency & labelling

Status notes

Signed and effective 6 Sep 2023. Deadlines: report on GenAI use cases and risks, and agency inventories of high-risk uses, within 60 days; critical-infrastructure risk analysis (with a classified briefing and public recommendations) and pilot sandboxes by March 2024; procurement, use and training guidelines building on the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework by January 2024; guidelines on impacts on vulnerable communities, worker trainings and consideration of pilots by July 2024; updated project approval, procurement and contract terms, and criteria on workforce impacts, by January 2025. It also directs a partnership with UC Berkeley and Stanford HAI and a joint summit in 2024. Binding on state agencies only; it creates no enforceable rights.

Sources

Open the official source https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AI-EO-No.12-_-GGN-Signed.pdf

Secondary source: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/06/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-prepare-california-for-the-progress-of-artificial-intelligence/

Local copy

Archived. Last attempt 2026-10-17 23:06:28 UTC

Official source (third-party copy, not published) archive/_runs/2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14/C033/2026-10-14/official.pdf

Retrieved 2026-10-14 13:11:57 UTC

SHA-256 62b2f985ebde0a397679162aed5b66e1403a1c10a92e636eda6683cdf8886b2e

Secondary source (third-party copy, not published) archive/US-CA-11/2026-10-17/secondary.html

Retrieved 2026-10-17 22:16:31 UTC

SHA-256 28d16549a3da8ddac0641114f4e2a1e191d8249e5b99ca1c216c1e40298528ae

Verification

The instrument's own official text, or an official register, was stored and confirms the title, date and status. checked 2026-10-18 · official-url-fetched

Stored the signed order (gov.ca.gov PDF, 7 pages, copy of 14 Oct 2026), which confirms the number, all provisions and deadlines, immediate effect, the signature on 'this 6th day of September 2023' and the Secretary of State's attestation; page 1 of the text layer ends in a few garbled characters from the scanned initials, but the provisions are legible. Also stored the Governor's release announcing the order (gov.ca.gov), which confirms its signing and lists its provisions; the stored text of the release carries no date of its own (the date appears only in its URL), so the date rests on the order.

Second check: Independent check by Claude Code (claude-sonnet-5-5), 2026-10-18: 8 field(s) supported.

History

2026-10-18Re-verified against its sources, no change — pipeline run 2026-10-18-recheck-north-america-2 (recheck), candidate US-CA-112026-10-18-recheck-north-america-2 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
2026-10-14related: [{"id": "US-CA-09", "slug": "ca-eo-n-9-26"}] → [{"id": "US-CA-09", "slug": "ca-eo-n-9-26"}, {"id": "US-CA-10", "slug": "califor — the two California executive orders on AI, as the checkers of run 2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14 named them (checks/C032.json, checks/C033.json)2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
2026-10-14Added to the register — found in pipeline run 2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14, candidate C033 (US-CA/executive)2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)

Related records

California EO N-9-26 California (US) · In force

California EO N-5-26 California (US) · In force

Citation

Governor of California (Gavin Newsom). Executive Order N-12-23 (generative artificial intelligence: risk assessment and guidelines for state use) [Executive Order N-12-23]. 2023-09-06. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/AI-EO-No.12-_-GGN-Signed.pdf. Status: In force; verified 2026-10-18 (level A). Local copy archive/_runs/2026-10-14-discover-leads-2026-10-14/C033/2026-10-14/official.pdf retrieved 2026-10-14 13:11:57 UTC, SHA-256 62b2f985ebde0a397679162aed5b66e1403a1c10a92e636eda6683cdf8886b2e. Every AI Policy Ever, version 1.18 (snapshot 2026-10-18), record US-CA-11.

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