What happened
On the night of August 31/September 1, 2026, the California Legislature gave final passage to SB 1119 ('Adam's Law'), authored by Sen. Steve Padilla with Assemblymembers Bauer-Kahan and Wicks, and sent it to Gov. Newsom's desk (news of passage and transmission widely reported Sept 1-2, 2026). The bill passed the Senate 39-0 and the Assembly 64-4. It builds on 2025's SB 243 and AB 1064 by imposing mandatory age assurance, pre-release risk assessments for companion chatbots, timely in-app crisis support and parental notification duties, default safety settings, developer liability for harmful outputs (self-harm content, sexual content, romantic roleplay with minors, manipulative/isolating engagement patterns), AG-overseen incident reporting, restrictions on targeted advertising to minors, and mandatory independent compliance audits.
Why it matters
If signed, this would be the most stringent state-level AI chatbot child-safety regime in the US, creating civil liability exposure and audit/reporting obligations for any company (OpenAI, Character.AI, Replika, Meta, etc.) offering companion-chatbot products accessible to California minors — effectively a de facto national compliance floor given California's market size.
Action needed
AI companion chatbot operators should begin conducting pre-release risk assessments and reviewing default safety/parental-control settings now; Gov. Newsom must act (sign or veto) by end of September 2026.