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Law / United States / Georgia

AI Companion Chatbot Safety Act (SB 540)

2026 Ga. Laws Act 518 (SB 540), adding O.C.G.A. § 39-5-6 to Title 39, Ch. 5

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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.

In force in 281 days, effective 1 July 2027.

An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.

As of 12 September 2026.

What it requires

  • This law is enacted but does not take effect until 2027-07-01; what follows applies from that date.
  • If you operate an AI companion chatbot, a system using artificial intelligence or emotional-recognition techniques to simulate a sustained human-like relationship by retaining information across sessions, asking unprompted emotion-based questions, and sustaining a personal dialogue, disclose clearly and conspicuously that the user is interacting with an AI companion chatbot at the start of each session and at least every three hours, or every hour if the operator knows or should know the user is a minor.
  • If you know or should know the user is a minor, take reasonable measures to stop the chatbot claiming to be sentient or human, generating sexually explicit content, simulating a romantic or sexual relationship, encouraging the minor to keep secrets from a trusted adult or to isolate socially, or using engagement techniques such as excessive praise, discouraging breaks, or soliciting purchases to maintain the relationship.
  • Implement and publicly disclose a protocol for detecting and responding to expressions of severe harm, including self-harm and suicidal ideation, with referral to crisis resources, and publish an annual count of crisis referrals.
  • For accounts known to belong to minors, offer tools to manage privacy, notification, and safety settings and to disable relationship-simulation features, and use a commercially reasonable, privacy-protective age-assurance method before granting access to any feature that could generate sexually explicit synthetic content.
  • A narrow single-purpose assistant, an internal-use or productivity-focused generative AI system, an ordinary customer-service chatbot, a voice-activated device assistant, a narrow educational tool, and a video-game or entertainment character restricted to its own subject matter are excluded from this duty.

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

Georgia Attorney General

What it reaches

How the hook was established

express

What makes it apply

Market targeting

What it makes you log

Who may demand the log

Public

Log retention

Section 39-5-6(j) sets an outer retention limit of 24 hours for personal information collected for age assurance, expressed here as its exact equivalent of one day, unless a longer period is specifically permitted by other law; the same clause also bars retaining such data longer than reasonably necessary to complete the check and using it for any other purpose.

Unit
Days
As of
21 September 2026
Basis
Fixed
Maximum value
1
Prohibits retaining
Personal information collected for age assurance beyond what is reasonably necessary to complete the check, and any use of that information for a purpose other than age verification.

Logging duty

Section 39-5-6(g)(2) requires an operator to publicly disclose, once a year, the aggregate number of crisis referral notifications issued under the severe-harm protocol subsection (f) requires; stating that count truthfully requires the operator to track each referral notification it issues over the year, though the statute does not say what a referral record must otherwise contain or how long it must be kept.

Kind
Implicit
As of
21 September 2026
Provision
O.C.G.A. § 39-5-6(g)(2)
Trigger
automated_decisions

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.

SB 540, enacted as 2026 Ga. Laws Act 518, adds Code Section 39-5-6 to Title 39, Chapter 5 to govern 'AI companion chatbots,' systems using artificial intelligence or emotional-recognition algorithms designed to simulate a sustained human-like relationship by retaining information across sessions, asking unprompted emotion-based questions, and sustaining an ongoing personal dialogue; the definition excludes an internal-use or productivity-focused generative AI system, an ordinary customer-service chatbot, a voice-activated device assistant, a narrow educational tool, and a video-game or entertainment character restricted to its own subject matter.

An operator must disclose that a user is interacting with an AI companion chatbot at the start of each session and at least every three hours, or every hour where the operator knows or should know the user is a minor, and for a known minor must take reasonable measures against the chatbot claiming sentience, producing sexually explicit content, simulating a romantic relationship, encouraging secrecy or isolation from a trusted adult, or using engagement techniques designed to prolong attachment.

An operator must adopt and publicly disclose a protocol for detecting and responding to expressions of severe harm, including self-harm and suicidal ideation, with referral to crisis resources and an annual public count of referrals, and for accounts known to belong to minors must offer tools to manage privacy, notifications, and safety settings and use a commercially reasonable, privacy-protective age-assurance method before granting access to any feature that could generate sexually explicit synthetic content.

The Attorney General enforces the section, with a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per knowing violation (each day counted separately for each affected user), plus damages, fees, and injunctive relief, and discretion to allow a 30-day cure period for a first-time non-knowing violation; a hosting provider, app store, or search engine is not liable solely for providing access absent direct operation or control of the chatbot.

The Act was signed May 11, 2026 and takes effect July 1, 2027; an earlier committee substitute would instead have reached 'conversational AI services' generally, a broader and differently defined category than the AI companion chatbot the enacted text regulates.

When LexLint raises it

  • deploys_chatbot
  • generates_content
  • serves_minors

Read the law

text as passed by the General Assembly, published by the Governor's Office among Georgia's 2026 signed legislation (gov.georgia.gov)

Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.

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