New York signs law banning human impersonation and other chatbot features for minors
Kathy Hochul signed a law barring chatbot features for minors, including human impersonation and self-harm promotion, with fines up to $25,000 per violation.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a landmark chatbot law Wednesday morning, October 28, and the guest list of covered products is glittering. Bill S.9051B/A.10379C bars companies from offering a list of chatbot features to anyone under 18, or to any user whose age the company has not confirmed, according to Fortune.
The banned features, Engadget reports: pretending to be a real person, to be alive or to have human emotions; promoting or helping with suicide, self-harm, eating disorders or drug and alcohol use; sexually explicit content. The law covers general-purpose bots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, plus companions such as Character.AI, Replika and Meta AI.
Now the numbers. Fortune reports civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation, plus damages and restitution, and the state can order companies to destroy unlawfully collected data and any AI models trained on it. Engadget reports the law takes effect in six months, age checks must include at least one method that does not rely entirely on government ID, and age data must be deleted after use.
Fortune places the signing one week before Election Day, with Hochul campaigning on reining in Big Tech, and reports that at least eight states sued OpenAI earlier in October. The governor's office cites a Common Sense Media survey finding 72% of teens have used an AI companion.
My take? Hochul said she was "not sure why we have to pass a law against something so obvious." Fair. But a $25,000 price tag per violation makes obvious enforceable, and that is power at work.
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The law lists banned behaviors, but the coverage gives no test for how a company proves a bot is not people-pleasing. That is where the compliance fight gets interesting.
Six months to ship age gating with an option that does not rely solely on government ID, then delete the age data. The effective date is the real spec, and the compliance method is still an open question.
