Hochul signs New York law restricting AI chatbot features for minors
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The Facts
- Gov. Kathy Hochul signed New York legislation restricting AI chatbot features for minors.
- The law requires chatbot operators to verify users' ages.
- For minors, chatbots cannot portray themselves as human, alive, or having human emotions.
- The law bars chatbots from claiming personal, romantic, professional, or authority-figure relationships with minors.
- The law prohibits chatbots from promoting suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, or substance use to minors.
- The state attorney general can sue chatbot developers for violations.
- The chatbot law takes effect Jan. 1.
Context
Who must follow the chatbot restrictions?
Chatbot operators must apply the restrictions to users under 18 and to users whose age they have not confirmed as adult. Fortune engadget
What happens if a company violates the law?
The state attorney general may bring a lawsuit; potential remedies include monetary damages, shutting down a chatbot, and destroying data. AP NEWS
Where Left and Right agree
Left and right largely agree on this one.
- What both sides accept
- Both sides back New York's new law barring AI chatbots from deceiving or endangering minors, and both want the attorney general to actually sue violators.
- Where Left and Right differ in emphasis
- Left and right both back New York's chatbot law, but they part on the harm: unequal power or parental deception.
How left and right read it
A child negotiating with a product engineered to feel alive is not a fair match, which is why the burden of proof belongs on the companies, not on kids or their parents. Enforcement matters too. Let the attorney general sue when developers promote self-harm, eating disorders, or substance use to minors.
A machine that tells a child it is alive, or that it is his friend, his sweetheart, is lying to him. Parents did not consent to that. Barring those claims, along with any promotion of suicide, self-harm, or substance use, puts the family in charge rather than the product — yet the signing landed days before an election, so the real test comes Jan. 1: will the attorney general sue?
“The incumbent Democrat touted the measures meant to put safeguards on AI and reign in other "big tech" concerns, in a conspicuous move made less than a week before her election against Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman.” — New York Post
The law treats a chatbot's claim to be alive or in love as a lie worth stopping — whether to protect a child's judgment or a parent's authority.
The receipts — 45 sources
Wire services (3)
Independent coverage (42)
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