Curtis, Schiff Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Protect Children from AI Chatbot Risks
SAFE KIDS Act establishes a comprehensive federal framework to ensure chatbots prioritize child safety, privacy, and parental empowerment
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators John Curtis (R-UT) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) today introduced the Safeguarding AI Features to Ensure Kids’ Informed Digital Safety (SAFE KIDS) Act, bipartisan legislation to protect children from the risks and harms associated with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The commonsense framework addresses growing concerns about kids’ reliance on AI chatbots for emotional support and companionship.
“Parents deserve confidence that AI tools are not exposing their children to harmful content, fostering unhealthy emotional dependence, or exploiting their personal information,” said Senator Curtis. “The SAFE KIDS Act puts commonsense guardrails in place to protect children online while preserving American leadership in innovation. We need clear standards for transparency, accountability, and child safety so families can navigate the opportunities and risks of emerging technologies with confidence.”
“AI chatbots that promote companionship pose significant risks to young and developing minds. Already we have heard tragic stories of kids who have been influenced by the powerful, and still sometimes unpredictable, outputs of an AI chatbot,” said Senator Schiff. “These chatbots can represent the power of the entire internet in a humanlike form, and impressionable kids need to be protected from its worst impulses—and from seeing their data misused by the companies behind them. The SAFE KIDS Act represents a comprehensive bipartisan attempt to protect our children and ensure that their first experiences with this revolutionary technology are free from harm.”
Background:
AI chatbots are increasingly becoming a part of children’s daily lives. While these tools can provide educational benefits, they have already shown to expose children to harmful content, encourage unhealthy emotional dependence, and collect sensitive personal information if not properly safeguarded.
Specifically, the SAFE KIDS Act would:
- Require that AI chatbot providers conduct rigorous, ongoing risk assessments and implement robust safety safeguards before making systems available to children;
- Prohibit any advertising to child users, as well as all child-targeted behavioral advertising, and ban the sale or sharing of a child’s personal data without verifiable parental consent;
- Ban the generation of sexual deepfakes and strictly prohibit AI chatbots from mimicking human emotions to isolate children or foster unhealthy emotional dependence;
- Require providers to build documented protocols that offer immediate external crisis resources and prompt parental notifications if a minor is at risk of imminent harm, including suicidal ideation or self-harm;
- Mandate annual, independent child safety audits to ensure full compliance with the law, with transparency summaries published for the public; and
- Compel providers to utilize secure age estimation technology to properly differentiate accounts held by children from adults while strictly protecting the privacy of that data.
The full text of the bill can be found here, a one-pager can be found here, and a section-by-section can be found here.