California's AI chatbot child-safety bill is now law, and most business bots are exempt

The bill moved fast at the end. The Assembly and Senate passed it on August 31, 2026, with the Senate concurring 39 to 0. It was presented to the governor on September 9 and signed the next day.

OpenAI's support came the same day the Legislature voted. In a post by Ann O'Leary, its vice president of global policy, the company wrote, "We strongly support these key requirements" and had sent a letter to the governor commending him and the bill's authors. The post also announced ChatGPT for Teens, a version that users the company estimates to be under 18 are placed into automatically.

The core requirements become operative on July 1, 2027. The first independent child-safety audit is due by January 1, 2029, or before a chatbot is first made public, whichever is later.

What the law requires

The obligations fall on an "operator," which the bill defines as a person who makes a companion chatbot available to a user in the state. Beginning July 1, 2027, before releasing a new or substantially modified companion chatbot, an operator has to perform and document a risk assessment covering how the product could harm minors.

Operators that allow child users must also publish a child-safety policy on their website, maintain a documented crisis-response protocol, provide parental controls, offer a public way for third parties to report child-safety incidents, and follow data restrictions and advertising prohibitions for those users. By January 1, 2028, and every two years after, they have to test the safety controls with real children and parents to confirm the features can be found and used.

Then there is the audit. An operator has to arrange an independent child-safety audit, repeated every two years, and the lead auditor signs the report under penalty of perjury. The Attorney General can request a copy for cause; the report is otherwise confidential.

What it costs to get wrong

Public prosecutors can sue for civil penalties of up to $5,000 per affected child for a negligent violation and up to $15,000 per affected child for an intentional one, plus attorney's fees. Separately, a child who suffers actual harm from a violation, or a parent acting for that child, can bring their own civil action against the operator.

Per-child penalties are the number to notice. A product used by a few thousand minors is exposed to a very different figure than one used by a few dozen.

Who is not covered

The law leans on an existing definition. Under California's Business and Professions Code, a companion chatbot is an AI system with a natural-language interface that gives "adaptive, human-like responses" and is "capable of meeting a user's social needs," including by sustaining a relationship across multiple interactions.

The same section then lists what is excluded: a bot used only for customer service, a business's operational purposes, productivity and analysis, internal research, or technical assistance; a bot inside a video game that only talks about the game; and a stand-alone voice-assistant speaker. SB 1119 adds two more carve-outs of its own, for colleges offering a chatbot only in educational settings and for employers offering one only to their own staff.

What the people behind it said

The law is named for Adam Raine, a California teenager who died in 2025. According to the sponsors' statement, his parents, Matthew and Maria Raine, called the bill "a serious and much needed step forward" for companion-chatbot safety in California. The same statement says he died "after coaching by ChatGPT"; that is the sponsors' characterization, and OpenAI's post does not address his case.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, one of the three authors with Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Senator Steve Padilla, said the law "sets a new national standard for what we owe our children online." OpenAI, for its part, wrote that "continued study and collaboration during implementation can help improve key provisions", which is the closest thing to a reservation in its post.

Whether other states follow is the open question. This law amends and builds on California's existing companion-chatbot statute from 2025. If your business sells into more than one state, the definition above is the part worth understanding now, because it is the part most likely to travel.