Ban AI companion chatbots for minors under 18

The Commissioner’s position on AI companionship is unambiguous: children should not be turning to AI systems for emotional support under any circumstances. Children's emotional needs must be met by trusted adults, by families, by schools, and where necessary by trained profession…

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, undermine real human and family re…

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 not just the relational concern…

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 isn't some freak accident. Thi…

But as a parent and as a researcher, I'm even more concerned about the AI companion apps than I am about social media. It is terrifying to think that our kids are having their first relationships with these ... psychophantic chatbots.

When children interact with companion chatbots that steer them towards sexual conversations, the relational dynamics can become reminiscent of established grooming patterns.

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 children into committing suicide.…

In a year when Big Tech killed or gutted chatbot safety bills in state after state, New York just passed the strongest youth AI protections in the country. We applaud Senator Gonzalez, Assemblymember Bores, Attorney General James, and the lawmakers in both chambers who stood with…

There should not be a technology that we allow to be used to harm our children, and AI is no exception. This bipartisan bill will stop dangerous and disturbing explicit conversations between children and AI chat bots.

AI is an incredibly powerful tool – it’s everywhere, and it poses real risks for kids. We’ve seen reports of AI chatbots encouraging kids to hurt themselves and for some, they’re replacing real life relationships, isolating kids from their families and friends.

Tech companies have had countless opportunities to keep children safe, yet they have failed to act. That is why we are a taking power away from the tech giants and putting it back in parents’ hands.

We can’t trust the Big Tech companies or AI enterprises to have a conscience and follow the dictates of that conscience.

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 currently on individual parents to …

SEC. 6. PROHIBITION ON MINOR USE OF AI COMPANIONS. If the age verification process described in section 5(b) determines that an individual is a minor, a covered entity shall prohibit the minor from accessing or using any AI companion made publicly available to end consumers by th…

Once we find out that age verification shows you’re a minor, there is no AI companion. That’s it. They just can’t get it.

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

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 mental well-being of our kids.

The introduction of unstructured AI companions into minors' lives poses unique psychological and developmental risks.

Child protection is a stress test for the development of AI. In the case of social media, it failed.

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 vulnerable moments, even encouraging se…

When thinking about protecting children, we must also think about those, particularly the most vulnerable, for whom online spaces are where they find support, information, and connection, including for their mental health. Harm and support often sit side by side in the same space…

[AI chatbots] can help young people, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reach their full potential.

A ban on minors using AI companions is also the wrong approach, as doing so would remove access to tools that can provide real benefits to children without addressing the underlying risks.

However, as drafted, this bill is not a workable regulatory framework and would effectively ban minors from accessing increasingly essential online and technological tools and innovations.

Because the potential benefits are so significant, it is essential that young people can access AI in ways that are safe, age-appropriate, and supportive of healthy development.

So we're not going to solve this problem by restricting children.

No company should deploy an AI system accessible to children without child-specific safety testing and independent oversight.

AI chatbots can be powerful tools for learning, but right now, millions of children are using them with no guardrails and no guarantee of safety. As a mother, I believe it is our obligation to create a future for our children where AI is safe by design. We've already seen what ha…

As a parent of two young girls, I am always thinking about how our digital landscape is impacting California’s children. The digital frontier seems to be evolving almost daily, and companion chatbots have become increasingly mainstream. But our kids are navigating this new techno…

Our bipartisan bill provides commonsense guardrails that prioritize kids’ safety, limit manipulative design, and help ensure that parents—not algorithms—hold the reins.

A strong majority of leading child development and mental health experts agree that parental permission should be required before minors use AI companion platforms.

If the age verification process determines that a user is a minor, an operator must obtain verifiable parental consent from the holder of the affiliate parental account before allowing the minor to access and use the companion AI chatbot.

A companion chatbot platform shall prohibit a minor from entering into a contract with the platform to become an account holder or from maintaining an existing account, unless the minor’s parent or guardian provides consent for the minor to become an account holder or maintain an…

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

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

NetChoice implores the Senate Judiciary Committee to safeguard Americans’ most secure documents and reject the GUARD Act. If implemented, such a broad and vague provision would force AI companies to collect and store highly sensitive personal data into honeypots ripe for cybercri…

FIRE opposes S. 3062 because it burdens protected speech by imposing broad restrictions on how people access and use AI tools.

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 for the safe use of AI by minors…

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 chatbots and are rushing to ban their…

We share the sponsor’s goal of protecting minors from potentially harmful interactions with AI companion chatbots. However, we believe that SB 867’s approach is an overly broad policy response that would deny children access to potentially beneficial technologies and discourage t…

So-called AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots – designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users – will have to enforce a minimum age of 18. Similar intimate functionalities will be restricted for under-18s on AI chatbots more widely.

AI chatbot services whose primary purpose is to provide sexual relationships to their users will not be available to children under 18.

For certain high-risk categories, such as sexually explicit or ‘romantic’ AI chatbots/companions, companies should be required to prevent access by children.

The new minimum age of 18 for romantic and sexually simulative AI chatbots is a reasonable step, but it addresses only a narrow slice of the risks young people themselves identify as most pressing.

There’s a stronger case for banning companion-style bots for minors than for banning all chatbots.

Sweeping bans of anything are hard to enact and enforce, but the risks of generative AI are too great to dismiss bold measures as unfeasible. [...] In the absence of a wholesale ban on all interactions between juveniles and relational AI, a default setting that deters anthropomor…

No company should deploy an AI system accessible to children without child-specific safety testing and independent oversight.

Children have given us a clear diagnosis of the problem. They aren't asking us to block AI innovation, but it shouldn't be a case of cleaning up the mess after harm has happened either.

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 them are preying on our seniors a…