New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law on 28 October that limits what AI chatbots may do with children. She signed it alongside a separate measure on internet-connected baby monitors, at a press event in Midtown Manhattan a week before the 3 November election. Early voting was already underway across the state. Hochul is running against Republican Bruce Blakeman and has made kids' tech safety part of her campaign, so the signing doubled as a campaign appearance.
The chatbot bill was sponsored by Democrats Kristen Gonzalez in the Senate and Alex Bores in the Assembly, and it passed both chambers unanimously earlier this year. It was drawn up with Attorney General Letitia James and Common Sense Media, and is filed as S.9051B/A.10379C; the baby-monitor measure is S.9508/A.5175A. Under it, companies must check a user's age by more than one method, at least one of which cannot depend solely on government ID, and must delete the age data once they have used it.
“AI companies offer chatbots with features that are dangerous, and even deadly, for kids and teens. That is not innovation; it is reckless endangerment of our children.”
Jim Steyer, founder and CEO, Common Sense Media, on the signing · engadget.com ↗
Anyone under 18, or not yet confirmed as an adult, may not be given a chatbot that poses as a real person, claims to be alive, or presents human emotions. The same protections cover bots that claim to be a friend, a romantic partner, a professional or an authority figure, that ask unprompted emotional questions, or that bring up a child's private health details from earlier chats. Chatbots are also barred from encouraging suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, or drug and alcohol use, from urging secrecy or distance from parents and professionals, and from producing sexual content or child abuse material.
Violations carry civil penalties of up to $25,000 each, plus damages and restitution. A company can also be made to delete data it collected unlawfully and any models trained on it. The attorney general must set up a public website for complaints. The chatbot rules take effect six months after signing; the baby-monitor law, which requires security features and warning labels, starts after 90 days.
Hochul speaking at the press conference announcing the signing, from a video of the event
Governor Kathy Hochul/YouTube · Image: Engadget
Hochul said the measure builds on the state's Safe for Kids Act and tells tech firms they cannot monetise children's mental health. In her telling, minors will no longer be able to use chatbots that pretend to be their friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, a feature Common Sense Media calls dangerous for kids and teens. She presented the law as an extension of the state's earlier social media rules for minors, announced just as voters were heading to the polls. Jim Steyer, who runs Common Sense Media, called it the strongest kids' AI safety bill in the country and a model for other states. The group's research found that 72% of teens have used an AI companion, and 52% do so at least a few times a month. Bores said the bill passed despite aggressive industry opposition, and framed AI happening to people rather than for them as a choice, not something inevitable. Gonzalez argued that AI companies have for too long profited from rolling chatbots out to underage users. James said her office would keep working with every level of government while leaving room for safe, responsible innovation.
Reports differ slightly on one detail: the chatbot rules are described as starting six months after signing, while a search summary gave 1 January 2027, which no page the reporting rests on confirmed. The signing day is given as Wednesday 28 October.
About Kathy Hochul
Kathy Hochul, born in Buffalo in 1958, is a Democratic lawyer and politician who has been the 57th governor of New York since 2021, the first woman to hold the office. She served in Congress from 2011 to 2013 and as lieutenant governor from 2015, then took over from Andrew Cuomo.
This is not the first time she has signed a law on young people and technology. On 20 June 2024 she signed the SAFE For Kids Act, which restricts addictive social media feeds for minors, together with Attorney General James and the bill's sponsors. On 19 December 2025 she signed the RAISE Act, New York's frontier-AI safety law, with chapter amendments to follow in the January 2026 session.
The law follows New York's first-in-the-nation AI companion safeguards, passed the year before. It lands in a busy month: eight states sued OpenAI in October, accusing it of endangering children, and in September New York City banned generative AI from public classrooms from 2-K through eighth grade for a one-year study. On the baby-monitor side, the governor's office cited tests by the security firm Rapid7 of nine connected monitors from eight makers, in which eight scored an F and one a D. What remains is the complaints website, which the attorney general has to build, and the two start dates.
The New York bill signing, as pictured by the Transparency Coalition
Image: Transparency Coalition