California Companion Chatbot Safety Bill (SB 1119)
California, United States- Introduced
- Passed Senate
- Passed House
- Became Law
Makes chatbot access depend on age determination through California's age-assurance system, or requires operators to treat every user as a child.
Latest update
Passed the Assembly; Senate concurred 39-0; sent to engrossing and enrolling
This bill is still moving
This bill is still moving, so there's still time to push back.
Contact LawmakersWhat it does
SB 1119 imposes a duty on companion-chatbot operators to prevent unreasonable risks of covered harms to minors. An operator must either determine each user's age through California's Digital Age Assurance Act or apply the bill's child protections to every user. It also requires published child-safety policies, parental controls including the ability to disable access for users under 16, disclosures, reporting, and restrictions addressing harmful content and advertising. The Legislature completed passage on August 31, 2026, and sent the bill to engrossing and enrolling.
Why it matters
The safety duties are coupled to infrastructure that sorts users by age. An operator can avoid determining age only by treating every user as a child, which creates a powerful incentive to adopt California's device-level age signals and makes identity classification the gateway to ordinary chatbot access.
Our take
California presents age determination as one option, but the alternative is to put the entire service into child mode. That is not a neutral choice. It pushes chatbot companies toward a state-defined age signal and expands the same identity layer already being built for apps and social media.
Timeline
Passed the Assembly; Senate concurred 39-0; sent to engrossing and enrolling
LatestPassed the Senate 39-0 and sent to the Assembly
Introduced in the Senate
Sponsors
Sen. Steve Padilla, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan