Sponsors (20)
The bill increases protection of minors and strengthens accountability for AI chatbots through age verification, disclosures, and enforcement tools, but does so at the cost of privacy risks, compliance expenses, access barriers for some users, and added regulatory complexity for providers.
Children and families will face reduced exposure to sexually explicit, deceptive, or manipulative AI chatbot content because covered services must implement age checks, blocks, disclosures, and safer design features.
Federal rulemaking, clarified definitions of covered chatbots, and explicit findings of governmental interest create clearer accountability and enforcement paths for AI chatbot behavior, enabling regulators and companies to set and follow consistent safety standards.
Users gain stronger consumer protections: clearer AI disclosures so people know they are interacting with a machine, and bans on chatbots portraying themselves as licensed professionals, reducing the risk of acting on inaccurate medical, legal, or financial advice.
Small and large chatbot operators will face substantial compliance costs (age-verification systems, blocking controls, third-party verification), which can raise prices, slow feature rollouts, and deter innovation.
Requiring government IDs or sensitive documents for age checks and briefly storing verification data increases privacy risks and creates attractive targets for data breaches despite limits and encryption requirements.
Strict verification and blocking can deny access to legitimate users who lack recognized ID or who are misclassified by verification systems (false positives), disproportionately affecting young adults, low-income people, and other marginalized groups.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Requires AI chatbot operators to verify user age, block minors from AI companions, label chatbots as AI, restrict claims of licensed-professional services, and protect age-verification data.
Requires companies that run AI chatbots to verify users' ages, block children from 'AI companion' chatbots, and label chatbots clearly as artificial. It bans chatbots from claiming to be human or licensed professionals, limits how age-verification data can be stored or shared, and gives the U.S. Attorney General and state attorneys general power to enforce the rules with fines, injunctions, and other remedies.
Introduced October 28, 2025 by Joshua David Hawley · Last progress October 28, 2025