Governor Hochul and Attorney General James Announce Final SAFE for Kids Act Rules to Protect Children Online

So New York has finally grappled with the menace of addictive feeds and harmful AI companions — because nothing says 'protecting children' like a state-level press release from Governor Hochul and Attorney General James. The SAFE for Kids Act final rules are here, outlining which platforms are subject and setting standards for age determination and parental consent. A truly bold move, considering these same platforms have spent years proving they can't even enforce their own terms of service. But sure, this time they'll definitely follow the rules — right after they finish optimising every engagement metric to keep eyeballs glued.

Age determination and parental consent? Good luck with that. The tech giants who couldn't stop their algorithms from radicalising teenagers are now expected to voluntarily implement age gates. And 'harmful AI companions' — as if the problem is just the explicitly harmful ones, and not the pervasive, subtly addictive nudges that keep kids scrolling at 2am. The rules are final, but the loopholes are many. The cost of compliance? That'll be passed on to users, naturally. The kids will be safe from last year's dangers, just in time for next year's unknown horrors.

This is the regulatory gap in action: a state law trying to plug a dam that's already burst. While New York fine-tunes its rulebook, frontier models are sprinting ahead, and AI companions are becoming more persuasive by the day. The governor and attorney general can pat themselves on the back, but the hard truth is that this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Cheers to incrementalism — may it console us while the ship sinks.