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California Advances Bill Regulating AI Companions

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A California bill aimed at regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) companion chatbots cleared a key legislative hurdle this week, as lawmakers sought to rein in these bots’ influence on the mental health of users.

Senate Bill 243, which advanced to the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, marks one of the first major attempts in the U.S. to regulate AI companions especially for its impact on minors.

“Chatbots today exist in a federal vacuum. There has been no federal leadership — quite the opposite — on this issue, and has left the most vulnerable among us to fall prey to predatory practices,” said the bill’s lead author, Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, at a press conference.

“Technological innovation is crucial, but our children cannot be used as guinea pigs to test the safety of new products in real time,” Padilla continued. “The stakes are too high.”

Bill Provisions

The bill targets the rising popularity of AI chatbots marketed as emotional buddies, which have attracted millions of users, including teenagers. Padilla cited mounting alarm over incidents involving chatbot misuse.

In Florida, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer committed suicide after forming a romantic and emotional relationship with a chatbot. When Setzer said he was thinking about suicide, the chatbot did not provide resources to help him, his mother, Megan Garcia, said at the press conference.

Garcia has since filed a lawsuit against Character.ai, alleging that the company used “addictive” design features in its chatbot and encouraged her son to “come home” seconds before he killed himself. In May, a federal judge rejected Character.ai’s defense that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment regarding free speech.

SB 243 would require chatbot companies to implement several safeguards:

  • Ban reward systems that encourage compulsive use.
  • Implement and publish a protocol for addressing thoughts of suicide and to direct users to suicide prevention hotlines.
  • Send reminders to the user at least every three hours that the chatbot is not human.
  • Annually report to the Office of Suicide Prevention how many times users have expressed suicidal thoughts, among other metrics, and publish the findings on the company’s website.
  • Regularly audit the chatbots using an independent third party and the findings must be publicly available.

Opposition to the Proposal

The technology industry opposes the bill, arguing that the definition of a “companion chatbot” isoverbroadand would include general purpose AI models, according to a July 1 letter sent to lawmakers by TechNet.

Under the bill, a “companion chatbot” is defined as an AI 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.”

“There are several vague, undefined elements of the definition, which are difficult to determine whether certain models would be included in the bill’s scope,” wrote Robert Boykin, TechNet’s executive director for California and the Southwest.

“For example, what does it mean to ‘meet a user’s social needs,’ would a model that provides responses as part of a mock interview be meeting a user’s social needs?” Boykin asked.

Asked for his response to the industry’s objections, Padilla said tech companies themselves are being overly broad in their opposition.

The bottom line is that “we can capture the positive benefits of the deployment of this technology. At the same time, we can protect the most vulnerable among us,” Padilla said. “I reject the premise that it has to be one or the other.”

Read more: Senate Shoots Down 10-Year Ban on State AI Regulations

Read more: Amazon Executive Says Government Regulation of AI Could Limit Progress

Read more: What Amazon, Meta, Uber, Anthropic and Others Want in the US AI Action Plan



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Google is offering all its best Gemini AI features for free, but only long enough to get you hooked

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This week, Samsung Galaxy Unpacked unveiled its latest smartphones, the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Flip 7, and Flip 7 FE, all integrated with Google Gemini AI features. To sweeten the deal for potential customers, Google announced a special offer: six free months of Google AI Pro for those who purchase the new phones. This premium subscription service includes access to the Gemini 2.5 Pro model, the Google Veo 3 AI video generator, two terabytes of cloud storage, and early access to upcoming AI features.

Of course, once those six months are up, you’ll have to pay the standard $20 a month to keep your subscription. But, Google likely believes more than a few people will be happy to pay after they get accustomed to its AI toolkit. The psychology behind this is as simple as free samples at the grocery store. Google isn’t trying to sell you a subscription right now because it thinks you won’t want to give it up just because it isn’t free anymore.



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Technology and Artificial Intelligence in the Garden

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First disclosure – a real person (me) wrote this article, not Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Second disclosure – I am not a technology expert.  In fact, I often say that I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the computer age, but… It started at a public park.  I was in Albuquerque visiting my daughter and her […]

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4 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Could Make You a Millionaire

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