California bill would impose rigid limits on A.I. customer service chatbots
A version of the following public comment was submitted to members of the California Legislature on March 25, 2026.
We recognize that connecting with a human agent can be difficult for consumers. However, Assembly Bill 1609’s response time requirements are too rigid and contain enforcement gaps that undermine the bill’s own goals.
Requiring that every covered business connect a customer to a human within five minutes of a request, with a cap on cumulative hold times at ten minutes, ignores the reality of routine demand fluctuations. These demand fluctuations are one of the primary reasons customer service chatbots are used, but this bill would require covered businesses to employ more agents instead.
The bill authorizes penalties of up to $10,000 per violation where a business has repeatedly failed to comply, and requires operators to maintain a complaint process that covers the inability to connect with a human representative. But because the bill does not require operators to log or report actual response times, the attorney general would need to prove repeated noncompliance based solely upon consumer complaints, without verified data on whether the five-minute threshold was exceeded. This makes the timing mandate difficult to enforce in practice.
Rather than prescribing specific response times, the legislature should consider a standard focused on whether consumers can get their issues resolved effectively. Such a standard would emphasize outcomes rather than inputs, and as AI customer service tools continue to improve, a resolution-based standard would remain relevant regardless of whether the support comes from a human or an automated system.
We would welcome the opportunity to work with the sponsor on alternative provisions that preserve the bill’s disclosure requirements, ensure consumers have a meaningful path to human assistance, and give the attorney general the tools to actually enforce the standard.
The post California bill would impose rigid limits on A.I. customer service chatbots appeared first on Reason Foundation.
Source: https://reason.org/testimony/california-bill-would-impose-rigid-limits-on-a-i-customer-service-chatbots/
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