Research cutoff: 9 September 2026. The independent statutory lane read the complete official current Civil Code section and chaptered bill. No San Francisco letter was read in this lane; the conclusions below identify the instrument and its conditions, not whether a particular notice establishes them.
AB 621 became Chapter 673, Statutes of 2025, approved and filed on 13 October 2025. It amended Civil Code 1708.86, whose current official footer gives 1 January 2026 as its effective date. The official history and current section independently establish the identity; the suggested CalMatters path was not used as evidence. AB 621 section 2 says its provisions clarifying that a deepfake pornography service is subject to section 1708.86 are declaratory of existing law. That limited declaration should not be expanded into a claim that every new facilitation or notice provision previously existed. [Chaptered bill](http[local research file] [official history](http[local research file] [current Civil Code 1708.86](http[local research file]
The substantive rule is 1708.86(b)(3): knowing facilitation or reckless aiding or abetting of the creation/disclosure conduct prohibited by (b)(1)–(2). The separate (c)(2) route creates a conditional presumption of violating that rule. It is not a free-standing administrative removal order, an automatic judgment, or a universal 30-day immunity period for conduct otherwise satisfying (b)(3).
| Stage | Exact statutory condition or consequence |
|---|---|
| Covered service and underlying conduct | Under (a)(3), a website, mobile application or other service must have creation of digitized sexually explicit material as its primary purpose. The definition does not itself say its primary purpose must be nonconsensual creation. For the third-party presumption, (c)(2)(A)(i) additionally requires evidence of a service that engages in conduct violating this section. Definitions (a)(4), (6)–(9) concern a depicted natural person and realistic digitization; this is not a blanket designation of every AI service or all pornography. |
| Qualified sender and sufficient evidence | A depicted individual or a public prosecutor supplies evidence sufficient to demonstrate that the recipient provides services enabling the ongoing operation of the violating deepfake pornography service: (c)(2)(A)(i). A general policy objection or the sender’s official title alone does not establish these predicates. |
| Delivery and required particulars | Under (c)(2)(A)(ii), the sender must use a customer-service email or other designated process if prominently displayed on the recipient’s website. The evidence must name the deepfake service, generally describe the enabling services, and give sender contact information. Recipient use of that contact information is restricted to seeking additional report information necessary for the required steps. The three particulars do not replace the sufficient-evidence requirement. |
| Recipient’s clock | Under (c)(2)(B)(i), the presumption attaches if the recipient fails to take all necessary steps to stop providing the enabling services within 30 days of receiving that evidence. This is receipt-based, not automatically measured from a press release, posting or letter date. The text says days, not business days. |
| Extension and enforcement | A court may extend the 30-day period where additional time is needed for an ongoing law-enforcement investigation or operation: (c)(2)(B)(ii). Public prosecutors may bring a civil enforcement action under (f)(2). A notice does not itself adjudicate evidentiary sufficiency, violation, exemptions or penalties. |
All table locators refer to the [official current section](http[local research file] Its service-enabling language does not expressly name Apple, Google, app stores, payment networks or banks. Applying it to one of those actors requires the relevant factual connection; the statutory text alone supplies no contract or service-specific finding.
The statute’s exact formulation is a presumption of violation, not merely a presumption that the recipient has read a complaint. Paragraph (c)(1) separately presumes an owner/operator/controller’s knowledge of nonconsent unless express written consent is produced. Paragraph (c)(2) does not set out a separate administrative rebuttal or appeal procedure. Evidence Code 601 distinguishes conclusive and rebuttable presumptions, and two kinds of rebuttable burden; that general text does not by itself establish which burden this particular presumption affects. This packet therefore records the conditional presumption and ordinary civil-action route without claiming to have resolved its detailed litigation treatment or controlling case law. [Evidence Code 601](http[local research file]
Under (a)(14), public prosecutors include the Attorney General, city attorneys, county counsel, district attorneys and other city/county prosecutors. A prevailing public prosecutor may receive injunctive/equitable relief, USD 25,000 per violation, or USD 50,000 for a malicious violation, reasonable attorney’s fees and other appropriate court relief; proof of actual harm to a depicted individual is unnecessary: (f)(2). These are litigation remedies, not amounts automatically assessed when the 30 days expire. A harmed depicted individual has a different remedy menu under (f)(1), including an alternative statutory award of USD 1,500–50,000 for the unauthorized acts concerning any one work, potentially up to USD 250,000 for malice. Do not merge those private damages with the prosecutor’s per-violation penalties. The action limitation is three years from actual or reasonably diligent discovery: (g).
Material limits remain. Subdivision (d) excludes specified law-enforcement, legal-proceeding, public-concern, news/political and constitutionally protected circumstances; public-figure status alone does not make material newsworthy. Subdivision (i) excludes federally protected conduct, expressly including section 230 protection. Subdivision (j) protects an ISP’s mere transmission, routing or provision of access to third-party content, and preserves the referenced state net-neutrality requirements. Conversely, the disclaimers described in (e) are not defenses. These provisions prevent a blanket reading while leaving application to particular services and conduct unresolved.
The next discriminator belongs to the notice lane: the actual named service, enabling-service allegation, supporting evidence, designated delivery channel, receipt date, any court extension, recipient response and any adjudication. An older generalized letter cannot automatically satisfy the current presumption’s specific predicates. The present packet stops before that application and before legislative-origins research.
Direct ordinary GETs successfully retained the official current section, chaptered bill and history HTML. Full operative text was read through the official reader and checked against retained HTML; capture is not a claim that every navigation/script byte was interpreted. Exact metadata and failures are in statutory-captures.json. Current-code HTML SHA-256: 319afffe89143fb923e1bc5de56f727d3da6d80e0b4d47ecd51af04d7a3867fb. Chaptered-bill HTML: 9c3f9f8bd1019fd5c941781001d3bc2083745a3c09c4546768172c6e3d91d3e8. History HTML: 4467ecb0b50d8942d1bcc9366f3015f524f38d4ef8767f844839bf0ca42ea40a.
The analysis index was inspected. Its observed 10 September 2025 Assembly Floor Analysis download form returned HTTP 500 on one ordinary submission; that route was closed without retry and the analysis was not used as substantive evidence. This was a server response, not an administrative access-policy refusal or automatic sandbox approval rejection. No original analysis PDF or statutory bill PDF is claimed. No outreach, canonical case edit or other-law research branch occurred.