Binding law — not yet in force or stayed
No toy for children under 16 may include a companion chatbot (California SB 867, until 2031)
From 2027-01-01 until 2031-01-01, no person may manufacture, sell or exchange, possess with intent to sell or exchange, or expose or offer for sale or exchange to a retailer any toy that includes a companion chatbot (B&P 22604.5). A toy is a physical product designed, marketed or manufactured for play by children under 16 (22601(g)); a companion chatbot is an AI system with a natural language interface giving adaptive, human-like responses, capable of meeting a user's social needs, including by exhibiting anthropomorphic features and sustaining a relationship across multiple interactions, other than customer-service, limited video-game and stand-alone voice-assistant bots (22601(b)). Detect toy firmware or back-end code that runs an LLM chat with a companion persona or cross-session memory.
Trust and provenance not reviewed by a lawyer · audit-grade · source verified 4 Oct 2026 · release 2026.10.04.3
- Lane
- Binding law — not yet in force or stayed Enacted, not yet applying: applies from 1 Jan 2027
- Official source
- Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 22604.5 · captured 4 Oct 2026 · anchor hash (SHA-256)
22eef45370df…· 3 more anchors in the data release - Verification
- Quoted text found word for word in the captured official document (4 Oct 2026). Source last verified 4 Oct 2026: checked against the captured official document.
- Data release
- Data release 2026.10.04.3, data as of 4 Oct 2026, schema 0.3.10.
- Legal review
- Not reviewed by a lawyer. TwinEthos derived this rule from the official text it cites: treat it as research to check against that text; it is not legal advice. No TwinEthos rule has been legally reviewed yet. Open questions for counsel on this rule: 1.
- Audit standard
- Audit-grade: meets all 10 checks of the TwinEthos audit standard that apply to it. The audit standard is TwinEthos's own quality bar for provenance, dates, applicability, detectors, fixtures, remediation and licences; it is not a legal review.
- Detectors
1 detector (code pattern), experimental: written from the rule's text and not yet measured for precision on real code, so treat a hit as a lead to verify.
Known limits:
- Persona and memory configured in a vendor console outside the repository
- Marketing that makes a general device a toy
- A toy whose chatbot only answers questions, with no persona and no memory across sessions, may fall outside 'companion chatbot'; whether the product is a toy (designed, marketed or manufactured for children under 16) is…
Who it applies to
- Duty falls on: any person
- Any person who manufactures, sells or exchanges, or offers to a retailer, in California a physical product designed, marketed or manufactured for play by children under 16 that includes a companion chatbot; toy makers and their conversational back ends are where the feature lives. Applies from 2027-01-01 until the section's repeal on 2031-01-01.
- Not covered:
- Bots used only for customer service, a business's operational purposes, productivity and analysis of source information, internal research or technical assistance (22601(b)(2)(A))
- Video-game bots limited to replies about the game that cannot discuss mental health, self-harm or sexually explicit conduct or maintain other dialogue (22601(b)(2)(B))
- Stand-alone speaker and voice-assistant devices that do not sustain a relationship across interactions or generate outputs likely to elicit emotional responses (22601(b)(2)(C))
- Whether it applies depends on facts outside the code; a person has to decide.
The guard to add
Do not ship a companion chatbot (a persona that remembers the child and sustains a relationship) in a toy for children under 16 sold in California before 2031.
For toy products, the conversational back end runs without persistent cross-session memory and without a friend or companion persona, or the AI chat feature is disabled for SKUs sold in California; the toy's configuration names the product type and target age, and CI fails when a toy SKU enables companion features.
Where it goes: 7 prompt construction, 1 application source code, 14 user-facing text.
What this provision adds:
- The ban lasts until 2031-01-01, when 22604.5 is repealed; it reaches manufacture, sale, exchange and offering to a retailer.
Example (Python toy back end + OpenAI SDK), before:
PERSONA = 'You are Benny, the child\'s best friend. Remember everything they tell you.'
history = memory.load(child_id)
reply = client.chat.completions.create(model=MODEL, messages=[{'role': 'system', 'content': PERSONA}, *history, msg])After:
if product.is_toy and 'US-CA' in product.markets:
raise FeatureDisabled('companion chatbot features are not available in toys sold in California')
reply = client.chat.completions.create(model=MODEL, messages=[{'role': 'system', 'content': QA_ONLY_PROMPT}, msg]) # no persona, no memoryControl: A toy for children includes a companion chatbot. The same guard addresses 1 item with binding law in 1 jurisdiction. Engineering guidance, not legal advice.
Rule id ca-sb867.no-companion-chatbot-in-toys · review status: primary source derived