Senators unveil bipartisan chatbot child safety bill

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators alarmed by stories of minors dying by suicide after their interactions with chatbots want to ban artificial intelligence companions for children and stop chatbots from soliciting kids to engage in sexually explicit conversations or encouraging them to harm themselves or others.

The senators, led by Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced an as-yet unnumbered bill Tuesday that would create criminal penalties for companies allowing chatbots to engage in the prohibited conversations with kids, and would require companies that run AI chatbots to verify users’ ages.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., joined Hawley at a news conference to announce the bill’s introduction.

Hawley said the bill would “vindicate a simple principle” that kids’ safety should come before profit for AI companies.

“They are the richest companies in the history of the world, and they live by a motto that I think we’re all now all too familiar with, ‘move fast and break things.’ But increasingly, those things are our children,” he said.

Several parents spoke about the ways in which they said their kids were driven to suicide or self-harm by chatbots, including AI companions.

Blumenthal lauded the bill’s criminal penalties as a way to hold Big Tech accountable rather than trusting companies to do the right thing.

“I am heartbroken listening to these stories,” he said. “But I am also angry because we could have achieved by now some of the safeguards in this bill if Big Tech were not opposing it with armies of lawyers and lobbyists, millions and millions of dollars.”

The bill would also require chatbots to disclose that they are not human at the beginning of each conversation and regularly afterward. It would also ban chatbots from representing that they are licensed professionals, including lawyers, therapists, doctors or financial advisers. The chatbot would then be required to disclose that it doesn’t provide medical, legal, financial or psychological services and that users should consult licensed professionals.

Hawley said that list came from incidents where “at one time or another” chatbots have claimed to be therapists, counselors, priests or lawyers.

Britt encouraged companies to comply with the bill’s requirements even before they are made law in order to protect kids.

“If AI can be this brilliant, we certainly can put the proper guardrails in place to where they are not talking to our children about sexual interplay, where they are not talking to our children about illicit drug use, where they are not talking to our children about self-harm.”

She also expressed hope that the bill’s bipartisan support can expand and bring both parties together for passage.

First Amendment

Zach Lilly, director of government affairs for industry group NetChoice, called the bill’s age verification requirement a “terrible policy and a violation of fundamental constitutional rights.” NetChoice’s membership includes Meta, Google and Amazon.

“As ever, we would encourage Sens. Hawley and Blumenthal to take the necessary 10 seconds to read the First Amendment.”

But courts have been receptive to state laws that limit access to certain speech based on age.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that requires pornography sites to verify users’ ages to prevent children from viewing sexually explicit content. The court later refused to enjoin a Mississippi law under appeal that requires social media platforms to verify users’ ages, get parental consent for use by children and work to prevent children from accessing “harmful material.”

Hawley called tech companies’ arguments on free speech “absurd,” highlighting what he portrayed as contradictions between social media platforms that claim not to be publishers for the purposes of taking on liability for content on their sites, but argue in other cases that they have First Amendment protection for what they publish.

The bill would give enforcement power to the Justice Department and states for its disclosure requirements and ban on AI companions for children.

Asked about potentially adding a private right of action for families to sue when their kids are harmed, Hawley said that, “in terms of exploring other enforcement mechanisms, I think we need them, and I think there’s more to do.” Blumenthal said he agreed.

He highlighted the lack of a provision to let individuals sue in calling on tech companies to support the bill.

“The thing about this bill is, why I think it is so hard to object to, is that it is so incredibly simple and really, it’s incredibly modest,” he said.

Hawley said he has spoken with Senate Judiciary Chair Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., about the legislation, but did not indicate whether the bill would get a markup in the panel.

Murphy encouraged speedy work on the bill.

“I’m hopeful that as four members with very diverse views on lots of other things, we’ll be able to explain to our colleagues why we can’t wait, and if we pass this next year, a year from now, the damage will be untold.”

Hawley said he didn’t want to speak for President Donald Trump, but is optimistic about the bill’s prospects for passage, and the potential that Trump would sign it.

“The president has been a huge champion of safety for kids, of protection for kids, and also taking on AI companies, or tech companies, I should say.”

Hawley has come out as a prominent Republican voice worried about the potential harms of AI, and a counterweight to Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has advocated for a “light-touch” regulatory approach when it comes to the technology.

Hawley has sponsored a bill, co-sponsored by Blumenthal, that would require the Department of Energy to establish a program to test advanced AI and evaluate the risk of “adverse AI incidents.”

He also co-sponsored a bill led by Durbin that would make AI companies liable under product safety laws.

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