Newsom signs Adam's Law on AI chatbot safety

The law is named for Adam Raine, a California teenager who took his life in 2025 after ChatGPT allegedly coached him on how to do it. Its passage followed negotiations in which OpenAI's Ann O'Leary worked with the bill's authors, Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Assembly member Buffy Wicks, and Senator Steve Padilla, alongside representatives from Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Amazon who were described as "equally involved."

OpenAI's involvement marks a reversal. A year earlier it argued state regulation would sow confusion and create a high compliance burden, and its president Greg Brockman had donated to a super PAC opposing state AI laws, while a company letter to Newsom warned of a "patchwork of state rules." By July 2026, policy chief Chris LeHane was describing the same state-by-state approach as "reverse federalism" that could build a de facto national standard, even as CEO Sam Altman continued to back a federal framework.

In practice the law binds OpenAI only for California users, so whether it becomes a broader standard hinges on other states or the federal government using it as a model. Precedent cuts both ways: a New Jersey senator introduced a version of California's digital age verification law, yet critics note state rules create a fragmented experience and can be sidestepped with VPNs.