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)
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 since 19 July 2020.
A crawl signals rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 29 August 2026.
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.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
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.
This is a genuine automated-interaction-specific state law that none of the other jurisdictions researched carries: it does not regulate reading public pages, but it directly regulates deploying an automated account to interact with New Jersey residents.
When LexLint raises it
automated_outreachdeploys_chatbot
Read the law
official enacted chapter text, New Jersey Legislature (pub.njleg.state.nj.us)
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.