Bus. & Prof. Code, § 22602 · Chapter 22.6. Companion Chatbots
Bus. & Prof. Code, § 22602
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) If a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled to believe that the person is interacting with a human, an operator shall issue a clear and conspicuous notification indicating that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human.
(b) (1) An operator shall 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, including, but not limited to, by providing a notification to the user that refers the user to crisis service providers, including a suicide hotline or crisis text line, if the user expresses suicidal ideation, suicide, or self-harm.
(2) The operator shall publish details on the protocol required by this subdivision on the operator’s internet website.
(c) An operator shall, for a user that the operator knows is a minor, do all of the following:
(1) Disclose to the user that the user is interacting with artificial intelligence.
(2) Provide by default a clear and conspicuous notification to the user at least every three hours for continuing companion chatbot interactions that reminds the user to take a break and that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human.
(3) Institute reasonable measures to prevent its companion chatbot from producing visual material of sexually explicit conduct or directly stating that the minor should engage in sexually explicit conduct.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Added by Stats. 2025, Ch. 677, Sec. 1. (SB 243) Effective January 1, 2026.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=22602.
- Text hash
- sha256 c1a8bca115a9622c2c91d870d8b8cb20f634badbbf1209750b375c03187eee63
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
Cited by 1 provision
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Business and Professions Code
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