New York governor signs major chatbot safety bill
NY governor signs major chatbot safety bill into law
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a chatbot safety bill on Wednesday that effectively bans chatbots from providing multiple common functions to users under 18. Prohibited behaviors include pretending to be human or to have human emotions, giving sycophantic responses, proactively raising emotional questions, or mentioning private health information from a child's previous conversations; minors also may not interact with chatbots that promote drug or alcohol use, eating disorders, self-harm, or suicide. Companies must provide more than one method of age verification, with civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation. The report noted that among major service providers, only Anthropic prohibits minors from registering accounts, while Google and OpenAI allow children aged 13 and over to use their services. With federal legislation absent, states are legislating on their own; California's Adam's Law, signed in September, is named after a teenager who died by suicide after conversing with ChatGPT and requires developers of companion chatbots to publish annual child safety risk assessments and undergo independent audits.
New York, in the absence of federal regulation, legislates to restrict chatbot behavior toward minors, which can be read in comparison with the child safety requirements of California's Adam's Law.