Connecticut's CART Act (SB 5) — a State AI Law Pairing a Utah-Style Regulatory Sandbox with Chatbot and Employment-AI Rules

On 27 May 2026, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed SB 5 into law — the Connecticut Artificial Intelligence Responsibility and Transparency (CART) Act — a 39-section statute covering companion chatbots, automated employment decision tools (AEDTs), social media, AI-provenance data, frontier-AI whistleblower protections and AI-related layoff notices.
The law folds in a state AI regulatory sandbox and working group modelled on Utah's existing programme, with the sandbox's first working-group meeting statutorily required by 31 August 2026 to shape implementation details.
Chatbot operators must build in safety restrictions and protocols, including heightened protections for minors, and the law's provisions take effect on a rolling schedule from October 2026 through January 2028.
Independent legal-policy trackers (the Future of Privacy Forum) and law-firm client alerts (Ropes & Gray) both covered the law's passage and scope; as of the sources reviewed, the sandbox working group had not yet convened and no implementation or outcome data exists yet — this is a newly enacted legal framework, not a programme with a performance record.

Read the full analysis: https://fpf.org/blog/sb-5-in-five-what-to-know-about-connecticuts-new-ai-law/