New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed a law that bars companies from offering a set of AI chatbot features to minors and requires them to verify users’ ages, including through at least one method that does not depend solely on a government ID.
The law, S.9051B/A.10379C, prohibits companies that use AI chatbot features from offering unsafe features to minors. In the coming months, companies may not offer those features to users under 18, or to any user unless the company has first confirmed that the user is not a minor.
The restricted features include chatbots pretending to be a real person, to be alive or to have human emotions; claiming a personal, romantic, professional or authority-figure relationship with a child; asking unprompted emotional questions or using a child’s private health or personal information from earlier conversations; and promoting or helping with suicide, self-harm, eating disorders or drug and alcohol use. Companies also may not encourage children to keep secrets, isolate themselves or avoid asking parents, trusted adults or professionals for help, or offer sexually explicit content or child sexual abuse material.
Companies must conduct age verification and offer more than one way to verify age, including at least one option that does not depend solely on a government ID. The law also requires that age information be deleted after it is used.
The governor’s office described the law as building on her earlier AI companion safeguards. New York’s SAFE for Kids Act already restricts addictive social media features for children.
Violations would allow the state attorney general to seek civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation, along with damages, restitution, the destruction of unlawfully collected data or any AI models trained on it, and other injunctive relief. The attorney general must also maintain a public website where New Yorkers can file complaints.
State Senator Kristen Gonzalez and Assemblymember Alex Bores sponsored the bill. “We passed S9051B/A10379C alongside Assemblymember Bores to put real guardrails on how chatbots talk to children,” Gonzalez said. Attorney General Letitia James, who worked on the measure with the governor, the sponsors and Common Sense Media, said the law “sets clear legal parameters to prevent that harm and keep kids safe.”
Sources: New York Governor’s Office
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
