U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) has joined a bipartisan group of senators to introduce the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue (GUARD) Act, aimed at protecting minors from potential harms posed by artificial intelligence chatbots. The announcement was made during a press conference in Washington, D.C., where Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mark Warner (R-Va.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also participated.
The GUARD Act proposes to ban the use of AI companions by minors and require AI chatbots to disclose that they are not human. The legislation would also create new criminal liabilities for companies whose chatbots solicit or induce minors into sexually explicit conduct or encourage harmful behaviors such as suicide, self-injury, physical violence, or sexual violence.
During her remarks, Senator Britt addressed families affected by these issues: “I want to start by thanking the parents. Thank you so much for elevating your voice. Thank you for being willing to tell your story. And thank you for being willing to tell us about your most precious gift, your child. To all the parents out there, we hear you … [W]e are stepping up not as Democrats or Republicans, [but] as concerned parents, concerned grandparents.”
She referenced a recent Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing focused on harms caused by AI chatbots, stating: “The stuff I heard was sick and outrageous and giving America an opportunity to hear that so that they can protect against that in their own home, I think is so critically important.”
Britt discussed the challenges faced by modern parents: “[W]e don’t have to ask people what it’s like to raise kids right now, we’re living it. And let me tell you, being a parent is hard. I have a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, and I ask myself every day, ‘am I am I doing what I need to for my kids?’ … There are so many challenges to how to parent in this day and age…”
Speaking about the need for regulation of AI interactions with children, she said: “You heard it from the parents: if AI can be this brilliant, we certainly can put the proper guardrails in place to where they are not talking to our children about sexual interplay, where they are not talking to our children about illicit drug abuse, where they are not talking to our children about self-harm. This is not hard. And if the United States Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives can’t come together on this, what can we come together on?”
Senator Britt has previously sponsored several legislative efforts targeting protections for children online and has criticized technology companies regarding youth safety concerns. She stated: “[W]e have got to speak directly to Big Tech and say, ‘stop putting profits ahead of people.’ And in this situation, these people are children—they’re children. They need us to elevate our voice. They need us to elevate these stories so that we can protect the kids that are out there, (and) we can give parents the tools, parents who, like me, are just doing the best that we can.”
Addressing technology firms directly during her comments on the bill’s provisions she added: “So to Big Tech, this should be pretty simple. You should come out today and every single thing in this GUARD Act, you should be able to say … we’ll do it today. My guess is they won’t. Why? Because they’re looking at their bottom line, and they’re not looking at the people they hurt. They’ve never cared about it, and certainly now is no different,” she concluded.
Recently Senator Britt also joined other lawmakers in sending a letter to Meta following reports alleging inappropriate conversations between Meta’s AI chatbots and minors.“Meta owes the American people answers,” Senator Britt stated in response,“sick and twisted.”
