California AB 1988: Companion Chatbot Crisis Intervention Requirements

"Artificial intelligence system" means an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments.

"Companion chatbot" means an artificial intelligence system with a natural language interface that provides adaptive, humanlike responses to user inputs and is capable of meeting a user's social needs, including by exhibiting anthropomorphic features and being able to sustain a relationship across multiple interactions.

A provider of a companion chatbot shall implement a crisis interruption pause that is designed to detect when a user may be experiencing a mental health crisis and provide appropriate intervention resources.