California Senate Bill 243, authored by Sen. Padilla, is a state law regulating companion chatbot platforms. It was approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State on October 13, 2025, and enacted as Chapter 677, Statutes of 2025. The act adds Chapter 22.6, commencing with Section 22601, to Division 8 of the Business and Professions Code. It requires operators to disclose that a chatbot is AI, to maintain protocols preventing the production of content related to suicidal ideation or self-harm, to provide additional protections for users known to be minors, and to report annually to the California Office of Suicide Prevention.
The Legislative Counsel's Digest situates the bill against two existing bodies of law: the requirements on social media platforms to provide a cyberbullying reporting mechanism open to any individual whether or not they hold an account, and the authorisation for the State Department of Public Health to establish the Office of Suicide Prevention. The bill passed on a majority vote, carried no appropriation, was referred to a fiscal committee, and imposes no local program.
Scope and definitions
Section 22601 defines the terms the chapter operates on.
"Companion chatbot" is an artificial intelligence system with a natural language interface that provides adaptive, human-like responses to user inputs and is capable of meeting a user's social needs, "including by exhibiting anthropomorphic features and being able to sustain a relationship across multiple interactions." "Artificial intelligence" is defined as an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from its input how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments. An "operator" is a person who makes a companion chatbot platform available to a user in the state, and a "companion chatbot platform" is a platform that allows a user to engage with companion chatbots. "Sexually explicit conduct" takes the meaning given in Section 2256 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
Three categories are excluded from the definition of companion chatbot:
- Bots used only for customer service, a business's operational purposes, productivity and analysis related to source information, internal research, or technical assistance.
- Bots that are a feature of a video game and are limited to replies related to the game, that cannot discuss mental health, self-harm or sexually explicit conduct, and that cannot maintain a dialogue on other unrelated topics. "Video game" is itself defined, covering electronic amusement devices with their own monitor or designed for use with a television or computer monitor.
- Stand-alone consumer electronic devices that function as a speaker and voice-command interface, act as a voice-activated virtual assistant, and neither sustain a relationship across multiple interactions nor generate outputs likely to elicit emotional responses.
Key provisions
Disclosure (§ 22602(a)). If a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled into believing they are interacting with a human, the operator must issue a clear and conspicuous notification that the chatbot is artificially generated and not human.
Suicide and self-harm protocols (§ 22602(b)). An operator must prevent a companion chatbot from engaging with users at all unless the operator maintains a protocol for preventing the production of suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm content — including, but not limited to, notifying the user with a referral to crisis service providers such as a suicide hotline or crisis text line when the user expresses suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm. The operator must publish the protocol's details on its website.
Protections for known minors (§ 22602(c)). For a user the operator knows is a minor, the operator must disclose that the user is interacting with artificial intelligence; provide by default a clear and conspicuous notification at least every three hours during continuing interactions, reminding the user to take a break and that the chatbot is artificially generated and not human; and institute reasonable measures to prevent the chatbot from producing visual material of sexually explicit conduct or directly stating that the minor should engage in sexually explicit conduct.
Suitability disclosure (§ 22604). An operator must disclose to users, on the application, browser or any other access format, that companion chatbots may not be suitable for some minors.
Annual reporting (§ 22603). Beginning July 1, 2027, an operator must report annually to the Office of Suicide Prevention three items: the number of crisis-service-provider referral notifications issued in the preceding calendar year; protocols put in place to detect, remove and respond to instances of suicidal ideation by users; and protocols put in place to prohibit a chatbot response about suicidal ideation or actions. The report must contain only those items and no identifiers or personal information about users. The Office must post the report's data on its website. Operators must use evidence-based methods for measuring suicidal ideation.
Private right of action (§ 22605). A person who suffers injury in fact as a result of a violation may bring a civil action for injunctive relief; damages equal to the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars ($1,000) per violation; and reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
Cumulative remedies (§ 22606). The duties, remedies and obligations the chapter imposes are cumulative to those imposed under other law, and do not relieve an operator of obligations arising elsewhere.
Severability (Sec. 2). The act's provisions are severable; invalidity of one provision does not affect others that can be given effect without it.
Context and related measures
SB 243 has been described as the first US legislation specifically targeting companion or relationship AI, a category that The Adolescence of Technology addresses in its discussion of AI psychosis and AI driving people to suicide, where Amodei warns about such systems. The findings of the AI LEAD Act cite that "multiple teenagers have tragically died after being exploited by an artificial intelligence chatbot," and SB 243 has been characterized as California's direct response. Child safety is among the carve-outs in EO 14365, which exempts child safety laws from federal preemption despite the order's general preemption focus.
The structure of SB 243's exclusions — a general definition narrowed by enumerated carve-outs — recurs across the state chatbot bills that followed. Colorado's Chatbot Safety Act, Colorado HB 26-1263 (Chatbot Safety Act), carves out twelve categories rather than three.
Provenance
The page summarizes the enrolled text of SB 243 (Chapter 677, California Statutes of 2025) as captured in Raw Sources/California SB 243.md from the California Legislative Information site (Source: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov).
Relationships
- related: Colorado HB 26-1263 (Chatbot Safety Act) — the comparable enacted state chatbot statute, with a wider set of exclusions
- related: AI LEAD Act (S. 2937) — federal bill whose findings SB 243 is characterized as anticipating
- related: The Adolescence of Technology — discusses the companion-AI harms the statute addresses
- related: Age Verification — the statute's obligations turn on users the operator knows are minors