GitHub has joined Black Forest Labs, Hugging Face, and Mozilla in asking California lawmakers to revise AI transparency language that the group says could conflict with open source licensing.

The target is California's AI Transparency Act, SB 942, and related amendment language. The law is aimed at synthetic media transparency: the official bill text requires covered generative AI providers to offer detection tools and disclosure options for AI-generated or AI-altered image, video, and audio content.

The disputed section is narrower but important for open source developers. California's bill text says a covered provider that knows a third-party licensee modified a licensed GenAI system so that it can no longer include required disclosures must revoke that license within 96 hours. GitHub's post says the coalition believes that model is incompatible with widely used open source licenses, which are typically designed to be broad, perpetual, and difficult to claw back after downstream reuse.

The coalition is not arguing against transparency requirements outright. GitHub says it is asking for targeted amendments that preserve the regulatory goal while avoiding rules that could create uncertainty for community projects and software supply chains. It also points to international approaches that rely more on documentation, notification, and best practices than license revocation.

The practical issue is whether synthetic media rules can be enforced without treating open source distribution like a conventional vendor-license relationship. If California changes the language, it could become a template for AI provenance rules that do not accidentally penalize open model and developer communities.