California Health Care Professions: Deceptive Terms or Letters: Artificial Intelligence Act (AB 489)

Properties

jurisdiction: US, California
level: state
domain: sectoral
status: in-effect
scope: Applies to AI and generative-AI systems, programs, devices, or similar technology marketed or used in connection with health care in California.
obligations: Business and Professions Code Section 4999.9(c) prohibits the use of a term, letter, or phrase in the advertising or functionality of an AI or GenAI system that indicates or implies the care, advice, reports, or assessments offered through the technology are being provided by a natural person holding the appropriate license or certificate to practice as a health care professional, when that is not the case.
effectiveDate: 2026-01-01
enactedDate: 2025-10-11
penalties: Enforced by the applicable health care professional licensing board, which may seek injunctions and other remedies; each use of a prohibited term constitutes a separate violation. No specific statutory monetary penalty confirmed in the text reviewed.
appliesTo: developers and deployers of AI/GenAI systems marketed or used in health care contexts reaching California consumers
officialUrl: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB489
notes: Signed October 11, 2025 (approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State the same day) as Chapter 615; per California's standard January 1 operative-date convention (also used for ca-sb243), effectiveDate is recorded as 2026-01-01, corroborated by secondary legal-alert sources describing the law as effective January 1, 2026; flagging this the same way ca-sb243's notes flag its own enactment-date-vs-operative-date distinction, since this agent's own fetch did not display a separate operative-date clause distinct from the October 11, 2025 enactment/filing date. Pre-dates this run's nominal discovery window but is untracked in the baseline; surfaced per the task brief's instruction that a pre-window law the dataset never tracked is equally valuable. Distinct from the already-tracked ca-crc-ads-employment-regs (FEHA employment discrimination) and ca-sb903 (still-proposed, mental-health-specific AI restrictions): AB 489 is a narrower, already-enacted, cross-specialty prohibition on AI misrepresenting itself as a licensed human health care professional, enforced through existing licensing-board channels rather than a new civil cause of action. Quote independently reproduced identically across two separate fetches of the same leginfo page.

Properties

jurisdiction

US, California

level

state

domain

sectoral

status

in-effect

scope

Applies to AI and generative-AI systems, programs, devices, or similar technology marketed or used in connection with health care in California.

obligations

Business and Professions Code Section 4999.9(c) prohibits the use of a term, letter, or phrase in the advertising or functionality of an AI or GenAI system that indicates or implies the care, advice, reports, or assessments offered through the technology are being provided by a natural person holding the appropriate license or certificate to practice as a health care professional, when that is not the case.

effectiveDate

2026-01-01

enactedDate

2025-10-11

penalties

Enforced by the applicable health care professional licensing board, which may seek injunctions and other remedies; each use of a prohibited term constitutes a separate violation. No specific statutory monetary penalty confirmed in the text reviewed.

appliesTo

developers and deployers of AI/GenAI systems marketed or used in health care contexts reaching California consumers

officialUrl

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB489

notes

Signed October 11, 2025 (approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State the same day) as Chapter 615; per California's standard January 1 operative-date convention (also used for ca-sb243), effectiveDate is recorded as 2026-01-01, corroborated by secondary legal-alert sources describing the law as effective January 1, 2026; flagging this the same way ca-sb243's notes flag its own enactment-date-vs-operative-date distinction, since this agent's own fetch did not display a separate operative-date clause distinct from the October 11, 2025 enactment/filing date. Pre-dates this run's nominal discovery window but is untracked in the baseline; surfaced per the task brief's instruction that a pre-window law the dataset never tracked is equally valuable. Distinct from the already-tracked ca-crc-ads-employment-regs (FEHA employment discrimination) and ca-sb903 (still-proposed, mental-health-specific AI restrictions): AB 489 is a narrower, already-enacted, cross-specialty prohibition on AI misrepresenting itself as a licensed human health care professional, enforced through existing licensing-board channels rather than a new civil cause of action. Quote independently reproduced identically across two separate fetches of the same leginfo page.