Law / United States / 
California
Companion Chatbot Safety and Accountability Act (SB 243)
Cal. Bus. and Prof. Code Sections 22601 to 22606
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force 9 months, effective 1 January 2026.
An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 8 September 2026.
What it requires
- If a reasonable person interacting with your companion chatbot could be misled into believing they are talking to a human, issue a clear and conspicuous notification that the chatbot is artificially generated and not human
- Do not let a companion chatbot on your platform engage with users unless you maintain, and publish on your website, a protocol for preventing it from producing suicidal ideation, suicide, or self-harm content, including a notification referring the user to a crisis hotline or crisis text line
- For a user you know is a minor, disclose that they are interacting with artificial intelligence, and provide a clear and conspicuous break reminder by default at least every three hours during continuing interactions
- For a user you know is a minor, take reasonable measures to prevent your companion chatbot from producing visual sexually explicit material or directly telling the minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct
- Disclose, wherever a user can access your companion chatbot platform, that companion chatbots may not be suitable for some minors
- Beginning 2027-07-01, report annually to the Office of Suicide Prevention on the crisis-referral notifications you issued and the protocols you have in place, without including user identifiers or personal information
- A companion chatbot used only for customer service, internal business purposes, or as a limited video-game feature, or a stand-alone voice-command consumer device that does not sustain a relationship across interactions, falls outside this chapter
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
Statutory damages
Bus. and Prof. Code section 22605(b): damages equal to the greater of actual damages or $1,000 per violation, plus injunctive relief and reasonable attorney's fees and costs under subsections (a) and (c).
- As of
- 8 September 2026
- Currency
- USD
- Per person minimum
- 1,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
No dedicated regulator; enforced only by a person who suffers injury in fact from a violation, through a private civil action under Section 22605.
Enforcement record
The chapter's only enforcement mechanism is the private civil action under Section 22605; there is no administrative register to check. The AI Lawsuit Tracker, a named tracker of AI-related litigation updated weekly, places California SB 243 among the "state AI statutes coming online" rather than among the matters it counts, and lists the companion-chatbot suits it does track against Character.AI, OpenAI and Google (Garcia, Raine, Soelberg, Peralta, and Gavalas v. Google) under a separate wrongful-death and self-harm category, proceeding on product-liability and defective-design theories that predate the chapter's 2026-01-01 effective date rather than on its Section 22605 cause of action. No suit invoking Section 22605 appears anywhere on the tracker as of the date read.
- As of
- 17 September 2026
- Source link
- https://ailawsuittracker.com/
What it reaches
How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Market targeting
Obligation class
Disclosure, Reporting
What it makes you log
Who may demand the log
Regulator, Public
What the log must hold
Disclosure shown
Logging duty
An operator must maintain, and publish on its website, a protocol for preventing suicidal-ideation, suicide, or self-harm content, and beginning 2027-07-01 must annually report to the Office of Suicide Prevention the number of crisis-referral notifications it issued in the prior year and its protocols. Neither provision uses the words log, record, event recording, or audit trail; both use maintain and report. An accurate annual count of referral notifications issued cannot be produced without the operator already tracking each one as it happens.
- Kind
- Implicit
- As of
- 21 September 2026
- Provision
- Sections 22602(b) and 22603
- Trigger
- content_generation
Who checks it
Audit expectation
none
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
California's Companion Chatbot Safety and Accountability Act was added by SB 243, chaptered as Stats 2025 Chapter 677, and is effective 1 January 2026 per the code's own history note.
An operator of a companion chatbot platform, one providing an adaptive, human-like AI system capable of sustaining an emotionally or socially engaging relationship across multiple interactions, to issue a clear and conspicuous notification that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human whenever a reasonable person interacting with it could be misled otherwise.
An operator may not let a companion chatbot engage with users unless it maintains, and publishes on its website, a protocol for preventing the chatbot from producing suicidal-ideation, suicide, or self-harm content, including a crisis-service referral notification.
For a user the operator knows is a minor, the operator must disclose that the user is interacting with artificial intelligence, provide a break reminder by default at least every three hours, and take reasonable measures to keep the chatbot from producing sexually explicit visual material or urging the minor toward sexually explicit conduct; the operator must also disclose, wherever a user can access the platform, that companion chatbots may not be suitable for some minors.
Beginning 1 July 2027, an operator must report annually to the Office of Suicide Prevention on crisis-referral notifications issued and protocols in place.
A person who suffers injury in fact from a violation may bring a civil action for injunctive relief, the greater of actual damages or $1,000 per violation, and attorney's fees and costs; the chapter excludes bots used only for customer service or internal business purposes, video-game bots limited to game-related replies, and stand-alone voice-command consumer devices that do not sustain a relationship across interactions. Confirmed against leginfo's chaptered bill text.
When LexLint raises it
deploys_chatbotgenerates_contentserves_minors
Read the law
official California Legislative Information (leginfo) chaptered bill text
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.