On October 20, 2026, the New York City (NYC) Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) proposed rules to amend the under the City’s Consumer Protection Law. The amendments would apply to any automated customer service systems, including AI chatbots, rules-based bots, and phone trees, that handle consumer communications and would:

• require a clear and conspicuous upfront disclosure that the consumer is dealing with an automated system
• make it an unfair and deceptive to advertise a customer service channel that is not staffed with humans
• prohibit repeated routing to unhelpful menus or providing unresponsive or erroneous answers
• impose three-year, machine-readable recordkeeping requirements covering vendor contracts, interaction logs, annual aggregate metrics, and disclosure language, and 
• eliminate “the technology did it” defenses to any violation of the laws DCWP administers 

The rules recognize a rebuttable presumption of violation unless the automated system allows a consumer to promptly transfer to a human in a single step (e.g., “Press 0”), or the business discloses how and when a consumer can reach a live representative or the company's response time.

The proposed amendments will require businesses to review and modify their customer service practices when serving NYC consumers, redesign systems to log every interaction, and accept full liability for whatever its automated tools say or fail to do so, without the benefit of a cure period. The per violation fines start at $525 for the first violation, jumping to $1,050 for a second violation, and capped at $3,500 for subsequent violations.  

Written comments are due by December 18, 2026, and a virtual public hearing will be held the same day. Please reach out to the Womble Communications,Technology and Media Team to discuss how these rules may affect your customer service operations or if your organization is interested in submitting comments before the deadline.