A bill regulating conversational Artificial Intelligence Services, like Chat GPT, died in committee over fears of a lawsuit. It largely aimed to protect minors.
Senate Bill 168 regulates the use of “conversational AI services.” That’s defined as AI that’s accessible to the public and primarily functions to simulate human conversation across textual, visual and audio communications aside from some specific applications.
The bill itself requires such chat bots to disclose that it is not human for all users and more frequently for minors. Protections for minors also include barring the AI from producing a visual or audible statement with sexually explicit content. AI chat bots would also need to respond to suicidal ideation or self-harm by referring the human in crisis to resources.
Those are the issues Sen. Liz Larson said she’s trying to target through SB 168. She mentioned instances where minors have died by suicide around the country after engaging with AI systems.
“So, these are extreme cases, but they highlight a real problem. Conversational AI systems are typically optimized to increase engagement, they tend to agree with users, they mirror emotions and they avoid disagreement," Larson said. "For minors, whose judgement and impulse control and emotional regulation is still developing, it raises more serious concerns. It would say they’re sort of accidentally predatory.”
Larson also argued the state should step in because the federal government hasn't been quick to establish guard rails around artificial intelligence.
The only opponent is lobbyist for Sanford Health TJ Nelson. He said this sort of legislation belongs to the federal level and pointed to the Federal Trade Commission and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
“We have to comply with what’s on the books today, and we can’t step outside of our bounds to comply with those federal laws," Nelson said. "This is a risk, a lawsuit risk, adverse Legislature and this committee, I know you’ve killed bills in the past because we don’t have to have a lawsuit that we will most likely lose.”
Nelson said he believes the language in SB 168 preempts the FTC through language that requires age-reference, behavior profiling and data collection, along with parental tools.
It was rejected after a six to zero vote Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee expressed a desire to see further work on the bill to support it in the future.
