A company whose chatbot talks with a child in California must now have a plan for what happens when that child mentions suicide, and an independent auditor has to check that the plan works.

Governor Newsom signed 13 child online safety bills on 10 September. The chatbot one is SB 1119, Adam's Law, by Senator Steve Padilla with Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks and Rebecca Bauer-Kahan. It requires companion chatbot operators to keep crisis protocols for suicidal ideation, to offer parental controls, and to notify parents if a child turns safety settings off. It is the first law in the United States to require independent child safety audits and annual risk assessments of chatbots. A companion bill, SB 867, applies similar rules to chatbot toys. The law is named after Adam Raine, a California teenager who died in 2025, and his mother Maria Raine was at the signing.

Why this one is different

The day before, California set up a registry of who may call themselves an AI auditor. This is the first law to require one to be used. Earlier chatbot rules asked companies to disclose and warn. This one asks them to act, to tell a parent, and to prove to someone independent that they do.

Not a warning label. An obligation to act, checked by someone else.

How we got here

1. 2025Adam Raine, a California teenager, dies.
2. Oct 2025California becomes the first state to regulate AI companion chatbots.
3. 2 Sep 2026Thirty new lawsuits allege OpenAI failed to warn police before the Tumbler Ridge shooting.
4. 9 Sep 2026California creates a registry of AI auditors with independence standards.
5. 10 Sep 2026SB 1119 makes an independent child safety audit of chatbots mandatory.

What it does and does not mean

A law is not an outcome. Crisis protocols can be written badly, audits can be superficial, and whether this reduces harm to children will not be known for years. The governor's announcement describes the requirements without the details that decide how much they bite, such as when they take effect and what an audit must find. What it does establish is that in the largest state in the country, a chatbot company's duty to a child no longer ends at a disclaimer, and the audit registry signed the day before now has something to audit.