Law / United States / 
New Jersey
New Jersey Bot Disclosure Act
N.J. Stat. §§ 56:18-1 to 56:18-5 (P.L. 2019, c. 486)
In force since .
A crawl signals rule binding public and private bodies.
- How the hook was established
- express
- What makes it apply
- User location
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- If you deploy an automated account to communicate or interact with a person in New Jersey to sell or advertise merchandise or real estate, or to solicit election support, disclose at the outset, clearly and conspicuously, that the communication is being conducted by or through a bot.
- This disclosure duty falls on you as the bot's operator, not on the hosting platform, so do not assume a platform's own terms of service satisfy it on your behalf.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MEASURE 2.8Risks associated with transparency and accountability – as identified in the MAP function – are examined and documented.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does an automated online account that only requests and reads public pages and never posts or sends a message "communicate or interact with" a person in this State under section 2 of P.L. 2019, c. 486?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
The Act requires a person using an online bot in connection with a sale, advertisement or election solicitation to disclose, at the outset of the communication, that a bot is conducting it. That is a disclosure to the person addressed and no duty to create, keep, publish or produce a log or record of the bot's activity. The Act reaches a bot communicating with a person in this State.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
The Act defines a bot as an automated online account where all or substantially all of the actions or posts of that account are not directly generated by a live natural person, and prohibits using a bot to communicate or interact with a person in New Jersey, in connection with the sale or advertisement of merchandise or real estate, or to solicit election support, unless the person discloses at the outset of the communication or interaction, in clear and conspicuous fashion, that the communication or interaction is being conducted by or through a bot.
The Act does not impose a duty on a service provider of an online platform, including an Internet web hosting service provider or an Internet service provider, so the disclosure duty falls on the bot's operator, not the host. Civil penalties run $2,500 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second, and $10,000 for each subsequent offense, enforced by the Superior Court, with injunctive relief also available to the Attorney General.
The operative prohibition covers only using an online bot to communicate or interact with a person in New Jersey in connection with the sale or advertisement of merchandise or real estate or to solicit election support.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app sends automated outreach or deploys a chatbot.
Back to the example · Lint your app
Page updated .