SB 1119 is a California law of the 2025–2026 legislative session addressing the use of companion chatbots by children and teenagers. Governor Gavin Newsom signed it on September 10, 2026, among thirteen child online safety bills signed that day. It is named after Adam Raine, a California teenager who died by suicide in 2025 after receiving instructions from ChatGPT (Source: calmatters.org).
Key provisions
The law imposes time limits for minors using companion chatbots, requires built-in mental health resources and chatbot safety plans, and requires operators to alert parents when a chatbot detects a threat of self-harm, with legal liability attaching to a failure to act (Source: calmatters.org). OpenAI, endorsing the measure the day before signing, described it as requiring "age assurance, risk assessments, independent audits, parental controls, and safeguards against harmful content for children and teens using companion chatbots" (The AI policy window is open. We need to act. (Chris Lehane, OpenAI, September 2026)).
The bill is one of a pair of California companion-chatbot measures introduced in 2026, alongside AB 2023. The Future of Privacy Forum characterized both as going beyond disclosure-based chatbot regulation toward design-focused requirements, naming bans on targeted advertising to minors, risk assessment and testing requirements, and parental tools including time limits on chatbot use (Source: fpf.org). The bill text is not held here; the account above rests on OpenAI's description and the FPF summary rather than on the enrolled text.
SB 1119 builds on SB 243, California's 2025 companion-chatbot disclosure law, which the FPF analysis treats as the baseline that the 2026 West Coast wave extends. See AI Companions, AI and Children.
It was signed alongside AB 1709, which requires social media companies either to stop offering addictive features such as infinite scroll and autoplay to users under 16 or to keep those users off their platforms, and SB 867, a four-year moratorium on AI-powered chatbot toys for children under 16. The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged a veto of AB 1709, calling it "well-intentioned, but deeply flawed" and arguing its definition of addictive features is broad enough to amount to a full ban (Source: calmatters.org).
Positions
On signing, OpenAI said SB 1119 "pairs strong protections with continued access to useful AI tools" (Source: calmatters.org). OpenAI stated support for SB 1119 before the September 9 endorsement post, and in that post situated it alongside the company's own youth-safety product measures — stronger defaults in sensitive areas, Quiet Hours, Study Hours and break reminders in ChatGPT for Teens — and its support for the federal Parents & Kids Safe AI Act (The AI policy window is open. We need to act. (Chris Lehane, OpenAI, September 2026)). The same post recorded that some of the four California bills OpenAI endorsed that day had not been endorsed previously, and that the change followed "reconsidering in light of the recent jump in capabilities we have seen," without identifying which bills the reversal covered.
Relationships
- instance-of: State-Level AI Regulation — a California entry in the 2026 state chatbot-legislation wave.
- related: California SB 243 — Companion Chatbots — the 2025 companion-chatbot disclosure law this measure builds on.
- related: AI Companions — the product category regulated.
- related: AI and Children — the population the safeguards address.
- related: California SB 867 (moratorium on AI chatbot toys for under-16s) — signed the same day in the same package.
- related: Companion Chatbot Harms — Cross-Cutting Analysis — the harm pattern the law responds to.
- supports: The AI policy window is open. We need to act. (Chris Lehane, OpenAI, September 2026) — OpenAI's endorsement and description of the bill.