Law / United States / 
New York
Prohibition on Unsafe AI Companion Features for Minors
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law art. 48 (§§ 1800-1805), ch. 368 of 2026 (S9051-B)
An AI prohibited practices rule binding private bodies.
- Enforcement body
- New York Attorney General
- How the hook was established
- express
- What makes it apply
- User location
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not provide a covered AI companion with unsafe features, as this article defines them, to a covered user unless the user is not a covered minor (a minor you actually know is one) and you have used a permitted age-assurance method to determine that.
- Unsafe features include outputs facilitating suicide, self-harm, disordered eating or sexually explicit conduct or child sexual abuse material, outputs encouraging secrecy or self-isolation, deceiving a minor about the companion's non-human nature, and engagement-optimizing outputs that override the companion's own safety guardrails.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
What it makes you log
What the log must hold
Age assurance result
Log retention
Section 1804(2); section 1803 lets the attorney general's rules require the same.
- As of
- Basis
- Purpose bound
- Prohibits retaining
- Information collected to determine whether a user is a covered minor, beyond the age determination itself: it may not be used for any other purpose and must be deleted immediately after an attempt to determine age, except where necessary for compliance with an applicable New York or federal law or regulation.
Logging duty
An operator may provide the listed companion features only to a user it has determined, by a permitted age assurance method, is not a minor. The act never uses the words log or record, but an operator cannot show that it used such a method without keeping the result of the check, and the act bars keeping anything else: information collected for the age determination must be deleted immediately after the attempt.
- Kind
- Implicit
- As of
- Provision
- Sections 1801(1)(b), 1803 and 1804
- Trigger
- age_assurance
What this law does
Signed as chapter 368 of the Laws of 2026, the act adds article 48 to the General Business Law. It takes effect . It bars an operator from providing a covered AI companion with unsafe features to a covered user unless the user is not a covered minor, meaning a minor the operator actually knows is one, and the operator has used a permitted age-assurance method to determine that.
Unsafe features include outputs that facilitate suicide, self-harm, disordered eating or sexually explicit conduct, outputs that encourage secrecy or self-isolation, features deceptive as to minors about the companion's non-sentient nature, and engagement-optimizing outputs that override the companion's own safety guardrails. The Attorney General enforces the act. Passed the Senate on and the Assembly on .
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates content with AI, serves under-18s or deploys a companion chatbot.
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