S-4519.1

SUBSTITUTE SENATE BILL 6299

BySenate Labor & Commerce (originally sponsored by Senators Stanford, Keiser, Conway, Hasegawa, Kuderer, Nobles, and Valdez)

AN ACT Relating to protecting employee rights in the workplace with regards to the use of digital technology; and adding a new section to chapter 49.44 RCW.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1. A new section is added to chapter 49.44 RCW to read as follows:

(1) It is unlawful for any employer to use a replica of an employee's voice or likeness without the explicit consent of the employee for a specific use. The consent must be within 30 days prior to the time of use, not at the employee's initial hire, and the employer must provide a reasonably specific description of the intended use.

(2) It is unlawful for any employer to utilize artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence to evaluate or otherwise make employment decisions regarding current employees without written disclosure of the employer's use of such technology at the time of the employee's initial hire, or within 30 calendar days of the employer starting to use such technology for such purpose. The written disclosure must be understandable, in plain language, and in the employee's preferred language.

(3) Nothing in this section shall be construed as changing mandatory subjects of collective bargaining.

(4) For the purposes of this section, the following definitions apply:

(a) "Artificial intelligence" means technologies that enable machines, particularly computer software, to simulate human intelligence.

(b) "Generative artificial intelligence" means technology that can mimic human ability to learn patterns from substantial amounts of data and create content based on the underlying training data, guided by a user or prompt.

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