A bill under consideration in New York would provide a private right of action, allowing people to file lawsuits against chatbot owners who violate the law.
I don’t see how you police/enforce this. The technology is out of the bag, people will find ways to access. Do we need age/location verification for this now too? What if I’m running a local agent? I don’t agree with this.
I do agree it’s limited to a small scope of New York-based smaller LLMs, but if you read the news you know why exactly this bill occured - just now Mamdani gave up on a useless chatbot made with local budget by his predecessor Adams: https://www.thecity.nyc/2026/01/30/mamdani-unusable-ai-chatbot-budget/ It was indeed giving inaccurate legal recomendations on city’s website. I think the better result that can happen to that bill is it becoming a trend across cities and states as, I suspect, New York administration wasn’t the only one falling for this scam.
I don’t see how you police/enforce this. The technology is out of the bag, people will find ways to access. Do we need age/location verification for this now too? What if I’m running a local agent? I don’t agree with this.
The law would allow you to sue whoever is running the chatbot. If you run your own LLM locally and take bad advice from it, then it’s your own fault.
Walk me through how a company based and operating not in new york would be subject to any actions from this lawsuit.
I do agree it’s limited to a small scope of New York-based smaller LLMs, but if you read the news you know why exactly this bill occured - just now Mamdani gave up on a useless chatbot made with local budget by his predecessor Adams: https://www.thecity.nyc/2026/01/30/mamdani-unusable-ai-chatbot-budget/ It was indeed giving inaccurate legal recomendations on city’s website. I think the better result that can happen to that bill is it becoming a trend across cities and states as, I suspect, New York administration wasn’t the only one falling for this scam.
So who gets sued. The guy who put the chat bot on the server and is running it or the chatbot software developer themselves?
Or both?
The guy who put the chat bot on the server, and then that guy may sue the other one if applicable.