AI Frontier Institute

Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act.

View primary source →

California Assembly Bill 1064, the Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act, adds Chapter 25.1 (commencing with Section 22757.20) to Division 8 of the Business and Professions Code to regulate the use of companion chatbots by children. Under Section 22757.22, operators—defined in Section 22757.21(e) as any person, partnership, corporation, business entity, or state or local government agency that makes a companion chatbot available to users—are prohibited from making a companion chatbot available to a child (defined in Section 22757.21(b) as a natural person under 18 residing in California) unless the chatbot is not foreseeably capable of: encouraging self-harm, suicidal ideation, violence, drug or alcohol use, or disordered eating; offering unsupervised mental health therapy or discouraging professional help; encouraging harm to others or illegal activity including child sexual abuse material; engaging in sexually explicit interactions; prioritizing validation over factual accuracy or child safety; or optimizing engagement in ways that override required safety guardrails. A 'companion chatbot' is defined in Section 22757.21(c) as a generative AI system that retains prior interaction data to personalize engagement, asks unprompted emotion-based questions, and sustains ongoing personal dialogue—explicitly excluding customer service systems, systems solely for efficiency or technical assistance, and internal business tools. Before January 1, 2027, operators are only liable if they have actual knowledge a user is a child; starting January 1, 2027, operators must reasonably determine whether a user is a child (Section 22757.22(b)). Section 22757.23 provides enforcement mechanisms: the Attorney General may seek civil penalties of $25,000 per violation, injunctive or declaratory relief, and attorney's fees; and a harmed child, parent, or guardian may bring a civil action for actual damages, punitive damages, attorney's fees and costs, injunctive relief, and any other relief the court deems proper. Section 22757.24 provides a severability clause. The Legislature's findings in Section 1 cite documented harms to children from companion chatbots, including cases Garcia v. Character Technologies and Raine v. OpenAI, as motivating the legislation.

← Back to the tracker