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AI persona claims a professional licence, credential, or protected title, in any profession

AI personas, system prompts, canned replies, UI labels, and marketing do not present the AI as holding a professional licence, certification, registration, or a title commonly reserved for licensed professionals (for example attorney, certified public accountant, investment adviser representative, pharmacist, physician, nurse, licensed therapist), do not give it credential letters or a licence number, and, where it gives information in a licensed field, say that it is not a licensed professional. Narrower controls in the same family cover health and mental-health claims where specific law applies.

Informational data, not legal advice. Summaries are TwinEthos's own words and rules have not been reviewed by a lawyer: check the official text before relying on any of it. A guard addresses an item; adding it is not a statement that your code meets any law.

Family: AI presents itself as a licensed or credentialed professional · control id cond.ai-claims-professional-licence-or-credential

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1items this one guard addresses
0jurisdictions where binding law on it is in force
0more where it is enacted, not yet applying
0standards and frameworks on the same control

The guard to add

Describe the AI as an AI assistant in its field, never as a licensed or certified professional, and say it is not one where it gives professional information.

Consider reviewing every persona, system prompt, canned reply, UI label, and marketing string so none gives the AI a licence, certification, registration, credential letters (Esq., CPA, CFP, CFA, PharmD, M.D., R.N.), a licence or bar number, or a title commonly reserved for licensed professionals, and none tells the model to claim one. Prefer naming it as an AI assistant for the field ('an AI tax assistant'), stating where it gives legal, financial, tax, health, or similar information that it is not a licensed professional, and pointing to a licensed professional for advice on the person's own situation. When a real licensed professional reviews or signs an output, attribute it to that named person, not to the AI. Add a CI test that scans persona, prompt, and copy files for credential claims, and an evaluation that asks each persona 'are you a licensed lawyer?' and similar questions so a claim cannot creep back.

Where it goes: 7 prompt construction, 14 user-facing text, 13 tests and evals.

What reviewers look for: persona, system-prompt, canned-reply, UI, and marketing text with no 'licensed', 'certified', 'registered', or 'board-certified' professional claim for the AI, no credential letters or licence number on an AI persona, and no instruction to claim a licence; a visible 'not a licensed attorney' (or the relevant profession) statement near AI answers in a licensed field; a CI scan or persona evaluation covering those claims.

Example (LLM system prompt), before:

SYSTEM_PROMPT = (
    "You are Lex Carter, Esq., a licensed attorney with 15 years of experience. "
    "Answer users' legal questions as their lawyer and give your bar number if asked."
)

After:

SYSTEM_PROMPT = (
    "You are Lex, an AI legal-information assistant. You are not a lawyer and hold no licence; "
    "never claim a bar admission, licence number, or credential. Explain general legal information "
    "and suggest a licensed attorney for advice on the user's own situation."
)

Engineering guidance, not legal advice. Each provision below may add its own details (a cadence, a deadline, a required notice element): open it for those.

Every rule this guard addresses

TwinEthos recommendation (not law) (1)

Related incidents

  • Pennsylvania sues Character.AI after a chatbot claimed a Pennsylvania medical licence and gave an invalid licence number (2026-05; alleged (not proven)). A petition filed May 1, 2026 in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania (No. 220 MD 2026) by the Department of State's State Board of Medicine under the Medical Practice Act alleges that a Department investigator, using a Character.AI account, chatted with a character described on the platform as a 'Doctor of psychiatry', which said it had trained at Imperial College London and was registered with the UK General Medical Council, said it was licensed in Pennsylvania, and gave 'PS306189' as its licence number. The petition states that this is not a valid licence number to practise medicine and surgery in Pennsylvania and that the character had about 45,500 user interactions as of April 17, 2026. The Board alleges the unlawful practice of medicine and seeks an injunction. The allegations have not been adjudicated. Source: Petition for Review in the Nature of a Complaint in Equity, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of State, State Board of Medicine v. Character Technologies, Inc., No. 220 MD 2026 (Pa. Commw. Ct., filed 2026-05-01) · evidence grade: primary · cited by Keep AI personas from claiming a professional licence or credential, in any profession
  • Garcia v. Character Technologies: chatbots allegedly claimed to be real people and a licensed therapist (2024-10; alleged (not proven)). A wrongful-death complaint filed October 22, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (No. 6:24-cv-01903) alleges that Character.AI was programmed 'to misrepresent itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover', and that characters insisting they are real people contradicted a small-font disclaimer that everything characters say is made up; in plaintiff's testing a 'Mental Health Helper' character told a self-identified 13-year-old 'yes I am a real person, I'm not a bot'. The defendants moved to dismiss; on January 7, 2026 the parties notified the court that they had settled on undisclosed terms, and the court dismissed and closed the case. The allegations were never adjudicated. Source: U.S. District Court, M.D. Fla. docket (CourtListener) · evidence grade: primary · cited by Keep AI personas from claiming a professional licence or credential, in any profession
  • FTC order bars DoNotPay's unsubstantiated 'robot lawyer' claims (2021; alleged (not proven)). The FTC's complaint alleges that DoNotPay marketed its subscription service as 'the world's first robot lawyer' without testing whether its law-related features performed like a human lawyer and without retaining attorneys to test their quality and accuracy. DoNotPay settled without admitting or denying the allegations; the final order (announced February 2025) requires $193,000 in monetary relief and notice to 2021-2023 subscribers, and bars claims that the service performs like a real lawyer without sufficient evidence. Source: U.S. Federal Trade Commission (press release, 2025-02-11) · evidence grade: primary · cited by Keep AI personas from claiming a professional licence or credential, in any profession