Regulating AI Habits, Not AI Idea
The brand new legal guidelines, SB 243 and AB 489, share a typical assumption: that AI programs will encounter edge circumstances. Consultants and lawmakers see performance points the place conversations will drift, and customers will deliver emotional, medical or high-stakes questions into contexts the system was not designed to deal with.
Static insurance policies written months earlier is not going to cowl each state of affairs. So, moderately than banning conversational AI, California’s strategy is pragmatic. If an AI system influences selections or builds emotional rapport with customers, it should have safeguards that maintain up in manufacturing, not simply in documentation. And that is an space the place many organizations are least ready.
AB 489: When AI Sounds Like a Physician
AB 489 focuses on a distinct threat: AI programs that indicate medical experience with out truly having it. Many well being and wellness chatbots don’t explicitly declare to be medical doctors. As a substitute, they depend on tone, terminology or design cues that really feel scientific and authoritative. For customers, these distinctions are sometimes invisible or undecipherable.
Beginning Jan. 1, AB 489 prohibits AI programs from utilizing titles, language or different representations that recommend licensed medical experience until that experience is genuinely concerned.
Describing outputs as “doctor-level” or “clinician-guided” with out factual backing might represent a violation. Even small cues that might mislead customers might depend as violations, with enforcement extending to skilled licensing boards. For groups constructing patient-facing or health-adjacent AI, this creates a well-recognized engineering problem: creating tech that walks a wonderful line between being informative and useful versus authoritative. And now, underneath AB 489, that line issues.
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SB 243: When a Chatbot Turns into a Companion
SB 243, signed in October 2025, targets what lawmakers name “companion AI,” or programs designed to interact customers over time moderately than reply a single transactional query. These programs can really feel persistent, responsive and emotionally attuned. Over time, customers might cease perceiving them as instruments and begin treating them as a presence. That’s exactly the danger SB 243 makes an attempt to deal with.
The regulation establishes three core expectations.
First, AI disclosure have to be steady, not beauty. If an inexpensive particular person may consider they’re interacting with a human, the system should clearly disclose that it’s AI, not simply as soon as, however repeatedly throughout longer conversations. For minors, the regulation goes additional, requiring frequent reminders and encouragement to take breaks, explicitly aiming to interrupt immersion earlier than it turns into dependence.
Second, the regulation assumes some conversations will flip severe. When customers categorical suicidal ideas or self-harm intent, programs are anticipated to acknowledge that shift and intervene. Meaning halting dangerous conversational patterns, triggering predefined responses and directing customers to real-world disaster assist. These protocols have to be documented, applied in follow and reported by required disclosures.
Third, accountability doesn’t cease at launch. Starting in 2027, operators should report how usually these safeguards are triggered and the way they carry out in follow. SB 243 additionally introduces a non-public proper of motion, considerably elevating the stakes for programs that fail underneath strain.
The message from this governance is obvious: Good intentions aren’t sufficient if the AI says the mistaken factor on the mistaken second.
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