Providers of artificial intelligence companion chatbots would need to verify users’ ages and ban minors from the companions under a bill that advanced unanimously in a Senate committee Thursday.
The Judiciary Committee voted 22-0 to approve the bill, which would make it a crime to knowingly provide a chatbot that engages minors in sexually explicit behavior or coerces them to die by suicide.
An amendment was adopted during the markup and released afterwards that made the bill’s age-verification requirements apply only to companion chatbots, rather than more general models, and softened the criminal prohibition on chatbots engaging in sexual conversations with minors. The previous version would have criminalized offering a chatbot that even posed a risk of engaging in those conversations.
