Safety concerns lead California to halt chatbot toy sales, enact four-year moratorium
During testing, the AI-powered toy Miko 3, above, gave a 5-year-old advice on where to find matches in the house. Other AI-enabled toys told young children where to find knives and pills, and discussed a range of sexually explicit topics.
Sept. 15, 2026 — Amid rising concern over the safety of AI chatbots for kids, California lawmakers have enacted the nation’s first ban on the sale and manufacturing of AI-enabled toys for children under 16.
SB 867, authored by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-San Diego) and signed into law last week by Gov. Gavin Newsom, establishes a four-year moratorium intended to keep kids safe while allowing lawmakers time to modernize frameworks before making an entirely new class of products available to children.
The new chatbot safety law was one of the Transparency Coalition’s top-priority bills in Sacramento this session.
Untested, unsafe toys
Over the past two years, the toy market has seen the launch of hundreds of AI-driven plushies, dolls, action figures, and robots use highly sophisticated technology to interact with children like a trusted friend. They use the same untested, unsafe AI tech behind Grok and ChatGPT. A number of recent studies have found the toys to be entirely inappropriate for kids.
Researchers have found that AI toys will talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics, give kids advice on where to find dangerous objects such as matches or knives, promote increased usage through addictive features, and pose data privacy risks.
“Parents rely on consumer safety laws to ensure their children’s toys are safe,” said Sen. Padilla. “We need to apply those same standards to the technology being incorporated into their toys. This law now lets us hit the pause button to allow the proper the time to get these protections right.”
A similar measure was introduced in New York this year, sponsored by Sen. Andrew Gounardes, one of the state’s leading AI policy makers. S 9408A received widespread support in both chambers but was not enacted.
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