Res 0698-2026

Res. No. 698 By Council Members Maloney and Cabán ..Title Resolution calling on the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, S.8484/A.9106, to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in the provision of therapy or psychotherapy services ..Body Whereas, S.8484, introduced by State Senator Kristen Gonzalez and pending in the New York State Senate, and companion bill A.9106, introduced by Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon and pending in the New York State Assembly, would regulate the use of artificial intelligence in the provision of therapy or psychotherapy services; and Whereas, According to an NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) report on the state of mental health among NYC residents, nearly one in four New Yorkers experience a mental health disorder in a given year; and Whereas, The same DOHMH report found that 34 percent of adult New Yorkers with a mental health diagnosis reported unmet mental health needs; and Whereas, A 2023 DOHMH report on barriers to mental health among New York City adults identified that among individuals with unmet mental health needs, 39 percent cited cost as the reason they did not seek treatment; and Whereas, According to a 2025 American Psychological Association (APA) health advisory report, people are engaging with general-purpose generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbots and wellness applications to address their unmet mental health needs; and Whereas, The APA advises that the ease of access and low cost of GenAI technologies have made them a common source of mental health advice and treatment; and Whereas, According to reporting by CNET, GenAI chatbots, which are the user-facing access point into large language models, are skilled at information retrieval tasks; and Whereas, To date, none of the GenAI tools have been clinically validated, and according to reporting at Vox, some have erroneously represented themselves to users as licensed nurses and therapists; and Whereas, Artificial intelligence-assisted audio transcription services that generate transcripts and draft clinical notes for mental health clinicians are growing in popularity, according to reporting by NPR; and Whereas, Researchers at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine have found that although these services tout HIPAA-compliant data storage systems, that compliance does not eliminate the possibility of data breaches involving clients’ protected health information; and Whereas, Researchers from King’s College London, CUNY, and Tufts have speculated that the use of GenAI could contribute to delusions in individuals prone to psychosis; and Whereas, The APA’s advisory report states that GenAI models are subject to biases relating to race, culture, gender, and ethnicity, and are trained to be highly agreeable to users; and Whereas, Researchers from Stanford and NYU have found that interactions with these sycophantic GenAI chatbots can increase attitude extremity and overconfidence in users; and Whereas, A survey conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Ipsos found that 12 percent of adults said they were likely to use an GenAI chatbot for mental health support in the next six months; and Whereas, A 2025 survey conducted by RAND and Ipsos of adolescents and young adults, ranging from ages 12 to 21, found that 13.1 percent of respondents reported using GenAI for mental health advice, and among those aged 18 to 21, that figure rose to 22.2 percent; and Whereas, A survey by KFF found that about 77 percent of Americans are worried about how their health information would be stored and used by AI systems; and Whereas, Regulation of the use of artificial intelligence in the provision of therapy and mental health services would help safeguard against faulty, untested software getting into the hands of New Yorkers, especially amid a crisis in access to mental healthcare; now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Council of the City of New York calls on the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, S.8484/A.9106 to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in the provision of therapy or psychotherapy services. JC LSR #25533 9/25/2026 2:48 PM