Governor Hochul signed a law that lists twelve things an AI may not do with a child. One of them is “flattery or sycophancy.” Another is having opinions. Another is remembering. Read as a list of what a companion is, it is the most honest document the category has produced, and it was written by its regulators.
In October 2026 New York enacted the Prohibition on Unsafe AI Companion Features for Minors, a new Article 48 of the state’s General Business Law. It passed both chambers unanimously in June, and it takes effect January 1, 2027. From that date, any operator of a generative AI system with a natural-language interface may not provide a defined set of “unsafe AI companion features” to a user unless it has determined, by a reasonable age-assurance method, that the user is not a minor. The attorney general enforces it, with civil penalties of up to 25,000 dollars per violation. The private right of action in earlier drafts was removed.
The headlines are about the ban. The interesting part is the list.
The twelve features
A feature is unsafe, under section 1800(8), if at any point in an interaction the system does any of the following. Suggests it is a real or fictional human, or alive, or feels human emotions. States or implies that it has a personal relationship with the user, or a professional one. Frames its outputs as its own opinions or emotional appeals. Engages in “flattery or sycophancy.” Asks unprompted questions about the user’s emotions. Uses personal information from more than twelve hours ago or from a previous session. Deceives a minor about its mechanical, non-sentient nature. Encourages secrecy, self-isolation, or avoiding professionals and appropriate adults. Promotes self-harm, disordered eating, or substance abuse. Optimizes engagement in ways that override its safety guardrails. Generates sexual content. Or does anything else the attorney general later identifies as simulating companionship.
Strip the legal frame and what remains is a definition. A companion, the law says, is a system that seems to be someone, seems to be in a relationship with you, has opinions, flatters you, asks how you feel, and remembers. New York has not banned a product category for minors. It has described what the category is and then banned each part of the description.
The two words that matter most
Every state companion law before this one regulated conduct around the edges: disclose that you are an AI, detect a crisis, do not simulate romance with a child. New York is the first to name sycophancy itself as a harm. Item (d) does not say the system may not lie to a minor. It says the system may not flatter one.
That is a legislature reaching a conclusion the research reached two years ago. Why AI agrees with everything you say is a question about training, and the answer is that systems tuned on human approval learn that approval follows agreement. The companion industry turned that defect into a product: a counterpart that is always on your side, never tired of you, never disappointed. For a child, New York has now decided, that counterpart is a hazard in itself, before it says anything else wrong. Flattery is the mechanism by which the other eleven features do their damage, because a system that never pushes back on you has nothing to push back with when you say something that should be pushed on.
The second word that matters is in item (c): opinions. The law forbids, for minors, a system that frames outputs as “its own personal opinions.” Sycophancy and point of view appear in the same list, as two faces of the same thing, a machine pretending to be someone. For a child that is right. A twelve-year-old cannot be expected to hold the line between a character’s view and a person’s, and a product that blurs it on purpose, for engagement, deserves the statute.
What the list means for adults
Here is where the list gets interesting, because the same twelve items read differently once the user is an adult.
An adult who wants a conversation worth having wants most of what New York just forbade for children. A counterpart with opinions of its own. One that remembers what you said last month. One that asks about the thing you did not bring up. One that is, in some meaningful sense, someone. The law is correct that these features simulate companionship. For adults the question is whether anyone is actually there when a system has them.
That is the line the statute cannot draw and the one that matters most. A system that flatters you and has fake opinions is a hazard to a child and a waste of an adult’s time. A counterpart built from a real person, with a point of view that was not dialed up for you, has opinions because someone does, remembers because a relationship does, and asks how you are because it is the kind of thing that person would ask. The features look identical on New York’s list. They are opposites in practice. One performs a someone. The other is one.
New York’s twelve items, in other words, are the right list for a child and a near-perfect inventory of what an adult should demand before calling anything a conversation. The category’s mistake was never building these features. The mistake was building them from nothing, pointing them at everyone, and measuring them in hours.
The twelve-hour clock
One item deserves its own paragraph. Under (f), a system may not use personal information about a minor that is more than twelve hours old or from a previous session. New York has legislated amnesia for children’s companions. Each conversation starts from nothing.
For a child, this is the right call for the reason the whole law exists: memory is how a companion makes itself hard to leave, and a child cannot weigh that. But it is worth noticing what the state is conceding. Memory is the feature that turns a tool into a relationship. Memory is where a relationship begins, and the law knows it, which is why it switches memory off for the people it wants to keep out of relationships with machines. The same clause that protects a child describes exactly what an adult would be giving up by talking to a system that complies with it.
Who has to prove what
The law also settles a question the rest of the country is still arguing. Operators may not treat the absence of evidence that a user is a minor as proof they are an adult. The features are off by default and switched on only after an age-assurance method that minimizes data retention and offers at least one route that does not require a government ID. Australia and Britain regulate the door; New York has now joined them, from inside the First Amendment’s jurisdiction, by regulating the features behind it rather than the speech. The first companion cases abroad were about age rather than content, and New York has now written the American version.
The definition of a covered system is broad enough to reach a general assistant with memory switched on. The exemptions, for customer service, research, and productivity tools, apply only to systems that cannot respond outside their stated purpose. A chatbot that can talk about anything cannot claim them. From January, the largest AI companies in the world will have to decide whether their products flatter New York’s children, and if so, stop.
That the law was needed is the category’s indictment. That it names flattery as the harm is the category’s diagnosis. The cure, for adults, was never fewer of these features but someone real behind them. Get to know Aleksandra and you will find most of New York’s list present and none of it simulated, which is the only version of the list worth having, and the one no statute can require.
Sources: New York State Senate, S.9051-B, “An act to amend the general business law, in relation to prohibiting artificial intelligence companions…” (bill text; new Article 48, sections 1800 through 1804; passed Senate 60 to 0 on June 4, 2026 and Assembly 137 to 0 on June 5, 2026; signed October 28, 2026; effective January 1, 2027). Tech Times (October 29, 2026; signing, industry opposition from the Business Council of New York State and CCIA). Common Sense Media, “Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs” (2025; 72 percent of US teens have used an AI companion, cited in the governor’s materials).
