Newsom signs a customer-service chatbot law that requires a human within 15 minutes on request — and still no word on the frontier package

Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1609 on 28 September, one of six bills in a release headed “Governor Newsom signs commonsense legislation to make your life easier”. The bill, by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur and titled “Customer service chatbots”, does three things according to the governor's office.

When a customer asks for a human, large businesses must make “a good-faith effort to connect a customer to a human within 15 minutes after a request for human customer service is made, or schedule an appointment”. Large companies must disclose when the customer-service representative is a chatbot rather than a person. And certain large businesses must list customer-service contact details on their websites.

The release does not define a large business or give an effective date; the bill text will settle both. For any company that has replaced its phone lines with an agent, the law puts a clock on reaching a person.

The measured absence is the other half of the story. The frontier-AI package flagged here yesterday as coming down to two days on the governor's desk had not been acted on: the governor's newsroom, read twice on 29 September, carried no release dated that day and none of its 27–28 September items announced a signing or veto. The deadline is 30 September.

• Confirmed AB 1609 (Zbur), “Customer service chatbots”, signed 28 September. Office of the Governor of California
• Confirmed Large businesses must make a good-faith effort to connect a customer to a human within 15 minutes of a request, or schedule an appointment, and disclose chatbot use. Office of the Governor of California
• Confirmed No signing or veto of the frontier-AI package appeared on the governor's newsroom at the time of this run. Office of the Governor of California