Newsom orders California agencies to keep saying “Artificial Intelligence”

Newsom orders California agencies to keep saying “Artificial Intelligence”

Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-10-26 on September 30, directing every California state agency and department under his authority to keep calling artificial intelligence by that name. The signed order puts it in one sentence: agencies "shall refer to Artificial Intelligence and AI as 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'AI,' notwithstanding any rebranded or different terminology used by the federal government, unless inconsistent with the law."

The governor's office graphic for an earlier California AI package, published in September before Executive Order N-10-26 and carrying no connection to it. Image: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom

That is the state half of a terminology split that a federal executive order opened by telling federal agencies to say Super Intelligence instead. The federal order was signed on September 29, the day before this one.

The reasoning runs to two lines. California "dominates Artificial Intelligence ('AI') innovation, even as no state has taken more aggressive action to strengthen the safety, security, and consumer privacy of AI". The order then says that "while language and choice of terminology can have significance, purporting to change something's name cannot distract a person of normal intelligence from recognizing the impotent and craven failure to take action to address well-documented emerging security and safety risks posed by that thing."

Those are the order's words, not ours, and they are as far as the document goes. It never uses the phrase Super Intelligence, never names the federal order and never names the White House. The closest it comes is "purporting to change something's name".

Newsom issues the order "in accordance with the authority vested in me by the State Constitution and statutes of the State of California, further informed by common sense", effective immediately. He also directs that it be filed with the Office of the Secretary of State and that "widespread publicity and notice be given" of it.

The order reaches agencies and departments subject to the governor's authority and stops there. It does not touch private companies, local government, the courts or the legislature, and the phrase "unless inconsistent with the law" leaves federal terminology in place wherever federal law requires it, which is where a state employee filling in a federal form would run into it.

It also closes with the standard disclaimer: the order "is not intended to, and does not, create any rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, against the State of California, its agencies, departments, entities, officers, employees, or any other person." No penalty, no deadline, no reporting requirement. It is a naming instruction.

The second California AI order in ten days

Newsom signed it alongside a set of new state AI laws covering workplace use, which his office announced on September 30. Ten days earlier the same office issued a far heavier document, the order that put work on an AI kill switch and onsite auditors in frontier labs on the state's agenda.

For anyone buying smart glasses, a headset or any other device sold on its AI features, the practical consequence is small but real: the words on a Californian state website, in a state procurement notice or in guidance from a state regulator will stay the ones the industry has always used. Federal agency material is now meant to say Super Intelligence.

Executive Order N-10-26 runs to a single page. It changes no rule, no budget and no deadline. It changes a word.

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