Official Summary Text
SB 1119, as amended, Padilla.
Companion chatbots: child safety.
Companion chatbots: children’s safety.
Existing law generally regulates artificial intelligence, including companion chatbots, as defined. Existing law requires an operator, as defined, to prevent a companion chatbot on its companion chatbot platform from engaging with users unless the operator maintains a protocol for preventing the production of suicidal ideation, suicide, or self-harm content to the user. Existing law requires an operator, for a user the operator knows is a minor, to, among other things, notify the user that the user is interacting with artificial intelligence and to disclose that companion chatbots may not be suitable for some minors, as specified.
The Digital Age Assurance Act requires a person who owns, maintains, or controls a software application, as defined, to request age
bracket data sent by a real-time secure application programming interface or operating system with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.
This bill would require an operator of a companion chatbot to, on or before July 1, 2027, do various things with respect to child safety and companion chatbots, including annually perform and document a comprehensive risk assessment to identify any child safety risk posed by the design, configuration, and operation of the companion chatbot that assesses, among other things, the likelihood of a covered harm, as defined, occurring to users. The bill would require an operator to submit to an independent audit of its compliance with those provisions, as specified, and would require, within 90 days of completing an independent audit, the auditor to submit an AI child safety audit report to the Attorney General for any audited
companion chatbot. The bill would, except as specified, require those audit reports to be kept confidential.
This bill would, beginning January 1, 2028, require the Attorney General to issue an annual public report on the audits submitted pursuant to the above-described provision, as specified. The bill would authorize a public prosecutor to bring a certain civil action to enforce the bill’s provisions and would authorize a child who suffers actual harm as a result of a violation of this chapter, or a parent or guardian acting on behalf of that child, to bring a civil action against the operator to recover, among other relief, exemplary damages.
Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need
for protecting that interest.
This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.
Existing law generally regulates artificial intelligence, including companion chatbots, as defined. Existing law requires, among other things related to ensuring the safety of companion chatbots, an operator to issue a clear and conspicuous notification indicating that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human, if a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled to believe that the person is interacting with a human.
This bill would declare the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would relate to chatbots and children’s safety.