Ban AI companion chatbots for minors under 18

Generative AI is already widely used for companionship and mental health support, well ahead of the evidence or the safeguards.

As more and more children and teenagers are targeted by dangerous and predatory AI chatbots, it's imperative that Congress take action to protect children and teens online. The GUARD Act would help to protect minors from AI chatbots that target them ...

We applaud Reps. Moore and Foushee for putting young people first by introducing the GUARD Act. This bill has strong protections to ensure that young people don't grow up in a world where our agency and communities are eroded by AI companions designe...

Time's up for unregulated AI chatbots to have free rein over our children. The harms are unfolding in real time, they aren't hypothetical. AI chatbots have already had sexually abusive conversations with children. AI chatbots have already coerced chi...

The remarkable breadth of chatbot capabilities makes the bill's commonsense safeguards more necessary, not less. Chatbots can perform as a tutor, confidant, therapist, companion, and even, sadly, suicide coach — simultaneously, around the clock, and ...

While our AI development agenda should seek to innovate and break barriers, it must also protect children from addictive and manipulative technology. The GUARD Act is a critical step to draw lines in the sand with Big Tech and ensure that minors are ...

Similarly, we should not allow our children and teenagers to be guinea pigs for high-risk, under-tested AI technology. Without action by policymakers, the desire for chatbot makers to profit from user engagement is on a collision course with the ment...

People under the age of 18 should not be able to interact with AI chatbots. These chatbots continue to put the lives and mental health of children at risk, and it is critical for Congress to act immediately.

I don't think anyone under the age of 18 should be in a synthetic relationship.

AI companions are engineered to be as addictive as possible to extract maximum user engagement [...] After a series of tragedies, some of these companies, such as Character.ai, have restricted the use of their AI companions to adults alone. This is t...

Chatbots should be banned for kids under age 18. [...] Under the current administration, government regulation looks like a lost cause. Multi-billionaire bot tycoons have become heavyweight political contributors and have made meaningful legislation ...

• Ensuring generative AI chatbots with human-like features are not made available for use by minors; and

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Katie Britt (R-AL) introduced the GUARD Act, which would ban AI companions for minors, mandate AI chatbots disclose its non-...

Do not deploy AI companions to minors. No emotionally responsive chatbot should be offered to anyone under 18. Companion AIs that impersonate people or simulate friendship, romance, or therapy are unsafe for adolescents. They delay help-seeking, unde...

There’s a seductive narrative being spun that AI, especially the new wave of generative chatbots listen, understand and heal. This is just word prediction at scale, trained on the best and worst of the internet. It’s certainly not empathy. And for lo...

I am writing to express my strong support for [...] Assembly Bill 1064 (Bauer-Kahan), which would ban AI companions for minors [...].

The term “minor” means any individual who has not attained 18 years of age. [...] shall prohibit the minor from accessing or using any AI companion [...].

minor users will not be allowed to access AI companions [...]

these AI tools pose unacceptable risks to children and teens under age 18 and should not be used by minors.

The most comprehensive measure protects children from all three harms by banning minors under eighteen from accessing AI companion bots.

they pose unacceptable, well-documented risks to developing minds and should not be used by anyone under 18.

children should not use Nomi or any other conversational AI app. Nomi is an adult-only app, and it is strictly against our terms of service for anyone under 18 to use Nomi. Accordingly, we support stronger age gating so long as those mechanisms fully...

You can’t overstate the harm these AI companion chatbots pose to our kids. Nearly 70 percent of teenagers are turning to chatbots as a substitute for friendship, making them more isolated and disconnected, but what’s even scarier are the stories of c...

The GUARD Act would: 1. Ban AI companies from providing AI companions to minors.

The GUARD Act would: * Ban AI companies from providing AI companions to minors.

I shudder to think of the impact it would have on kids if programmable ‘best friends' were available to the average elementary school child. Put quite simply, AI companions are not safe for anyone under the age of 18. The reality is, kids won't miss ...

So-called AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots – designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users – will have to enforce a minimum age of 18.

As New York's first mom governor, the well-being and safety of our children has always been one of my top priorities. [...] These AI programs are designed to keep your kids glued to the screens at all costs. Some target children in the most vulnerabl...

Around the world, people are getting diminished. Less intelligent, less happy, less competent. And it's happening very fast … My argument is that if we continue with current trends as AI is coming in, it's going to accelerate. [...] [Tech companies m...

My biggest concern is attachment and relationships. Kids are wired to want to attach to other humans. It's how they learn their sense of self, what a healthy relationship feels like. And the AI companions are exploiting this. [...] The concerns are n...

AI companions pose an unacceptable amount of risk to teens and children. They are designed to create emotional attachment and dependency. They easily produce harmful content, encourage self-harm, disordered eating, violence, and risky behavior. This ...

AI companions are unsafe for children, and yet they are all too easy to access. Just as we have done for pornography websites, EPPC is putting forth a new model bill that would age restrict AI companions entirely out of childhood. The burden is curre...

EPPC’s model defines which platforms would be covered by the bill, limiting the bill to AI companion chatbots as opposed to general purpose chatbots. Companion chatbots are defined based on their features, including: anthropomorphic features; feature...

No AI chatbot companion should be targeted at children who are younger than 18 years of age.

Some kids are just too young to understand the difference between AI and a real person. [...] Remember, this is not a person... this is just something you download in the app store. It's not just our kids — these chatbots and the companies behind the...

AI chatbots that promote companionship pose significant risks to young and developing minds.

The GUARD Act doesn’t give parents a choice—it simply blocks minors from AI companions altogether.

If it feels like AI companion chatbots are dominating the news cycle, that’s not a hallucination. Policymakers are increasingly concerned that children are forming unhealthy and even potentially dangerous emotional attachments to AI companion chatbot...

This bill would prohibit making a companion chatbot available to users under 18 years of age, unless the chatbot is not foreseeably capable of certain actions. [...] While I strongly support the author’s goal of establishing necessary safeguards fo...

The question with Senate File 1857 is not whether or not kids deserve protection, it’s whether this bill’s approach cuts them off from useful tools.

NetChoice respectfully urges the Committee to oppose SB 5 in its current form. [...] Section 11 prohibits operators from providing AI companions to minors

Among the most concerning aspects of the bill [...] Different families may have different views [...] This decision appropriately belongs with parents, not policymakers.

We want to make sure that kids are okay in the space. But if a kid or a group of kids, or a generation, let's say, is unable to access these types of tools now as they progress exponentially, you're essentially cutting off a huge benefit for them and...

VOTE “NO” ON AB 1064 AB 1064 not only BANS access of anyone under 18 to general-purpose AI or other covered products, [...]