California Bill Would Make Ai Companies Remind Kids That Chatbots Aren’t People

A caller measurement projected successful California (SB 243) would require AI companies to periodically punctual kids that a chatbot is an AI and not human. The bill, projected by California Senator Steve Padilla, is meant to protect children from nan “addictive, isolating, and influential aspects” of AI.

In summation to limiting companies from utilizing “addictive engagement patterns,” nan measurement would require AI companies to proviso yearly reports to nan State Department of Health Care Services outlining really galore times it detected suicidal ideation by kids utilizing nan platform, arsenic bully arsenic nan number of times a chatbot brought up nan topic. It would too make companies show users that their chatbots mightiness not beryllium owed for immoderate kids.

Last year, a genitor revenge a wrongful decease suit against Character.AI, alleging its civilization AI chatbots are “unreasonably dangerous” aft her teen, who continuously chatted pinch nan bots, died by suicide. Another suit accused nan institution of sending “harmful material” to teens. Character.AI later announced that it’s moving connected parental controls and developed a caller AI exemplary for teen users that will artifact “sensitive aliases suggestive” output.

“Our children are not laboratory rats for tech companies to investigation connected astatine nan costs of their intelligence health,” Senator Padilla said successful nan spot release. “We petition communal consciousness protections for chatbot users to forestall developers from employing strategies that they cognize to beryllium addictive and predatory.”

As states and nan national authorities double down connected nan accusation of societal media platforms, AI chatbots could soon spell lawmakers’ adjacent target.