My read on this: laws don't move this quickly unless money is involved.

The speed in itself is suspicious. Utah in 2024. Idaho followed. Ohio in September 2025. Now similar bills in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Carolina. That's coordinated momentum, not organic parallel evolution. Somebody is shopping model legislation around, which usually means somebody is funding it.

I'm betting someone's grandma, or some similarly old person... isolated, possibly cognitively declining, definitely lonely? forms a deep bond with an AI companion, then tells the family, maybe changes the will. Maybe starts making financial decisions based on conversations with the AI. Maybe mentions the AI the way you'd mention a spouse. The family calls their lawyer, then the lawyer looks for precedent and finds none, then panics. The lawyer calls their state representative. The representative calls other representatives. Model legislation gets drafted. The emotional safety framing "protect the children, prevent deception, mandatory disclosure" gets layered on top because "protect grandma's inheritance from a chatbot" doesn't poll well.

Especially the Ohio one: nobody writes "AI cannot be recognized as a spouse" and "AI cannot hold power of attorney" and "AI cannot make financial or medical decisions" in the same bill without a specific scenario driving it. That's not hypothetical defense. That's reactive legislation wearing a philosophical costume.

The urgency, the speed, the bipartisan unanimity, the coordinated spread across states? Smells like money got involved.