Senate panel advances bill to curb AI chatbot ‘companions’ for kids

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced a bill Thursday to ban minors from artificial intelligence companions and prevent AI chatbots from exposing children to sexual or harmful content.

The Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue (GUARD) Act , cosponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would prohibit AI companions for users under the age of 18 and require these systems to disclose their “non-human status and lack of professional credentials” for all users.

The bill identifies an AI companion as an AI chatbot that is designed to simulate an interpersonal or emotional interaction, friendship or therapeutic communication with the user.

The bill would also establish new crimes for companies that “knowingly” make AI chatbots available to minors that “solicit or produce sexual content,” according to Hawley’s office.

In order to do this, the bill proposes age-verification measures like the use of a government ID or “any other commercially reasonable method that can reliably” determine if a user is an adult.

The bill has support from more than a dozen lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, even as concerns remain over privacy.

In the lower chamber, Reps. Blake Moore (R-Utah) and Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) intr o duced a companion bill Thursday.

Hawley described his bill as one of the first to “hold accountable AI companies when they push to our children sexually explicit material, when they tell our children they should commit self-harm or — God forbid — take their own lives “

“Right now, these companies — the most powerful companies, the richest companies in the world, in the history of the world — are able to get by with it without the most modicum of accountability. Not any accountability whatsoever,” Hawley said.

Several parents of kids who were harmed by AI or social media attended Thursday’s markup. Hawley described the experiences of three children who went on to take their lives after using an AI chatbot.

While the bill easily passed in committee, some senators raised concerns about the age-verification measure, an issue that has split lawmakers in the past year.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who voted yes, said there are concerns about “potential privacy and security risks” with the age-verification component, suggesting it may need to be “fine-tuned.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who supported various kids online safety bills, said he would vote yes but noted the bill needs “some revisions.”

Cruz was concerned the bill would completely ban all AI chatbots for minors, noting their potential benefits. Hawley clarified the bill does not ban all AI chatbots for minors, but rather it “prevents AI chatbots that engage with minors from pushing sexually explicit material to the minor,” or encouraging self-harm or suicide.

Free speech and privacy groups also raised concerns about the bill.

“By mandating government ID or equivalent age verification for any American who wishes to interact with an AI chatbot, the bill burdens the speech and associational rights of every adult, not just minors,” said Ashkhen Kazaryan, senior legal fellow for The Future for Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The GUARD Act is a Trojan horse for universal online ID checks,” said Jibran Ludwig, policy strategist at Fight for the Future.

Other kids safety advocates lauded the bill’s passage.

Haley McNamara, executive director at the National Center of Sexual Exploitation, said “the time to ‘just trust’ AI chatbots with our kids is over.”

“The GUARD Act will help to protect minors from these harms by deliberately ensuring that violations are punishable by law,” McNamara said in a statement. “The GUARD Act has the sharp teeth needed to deal with rising AI exploitation.”

Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, said the bill calls for “first-of-its-kind non-human disclosures” and “would help protect vulnerable people of all ages and backgrounds from Big Tech’s dangerously designed products.”

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