As AI chatbots spread rapidly through the U.S. Congress for tasks like speechwriting and mail sorting, formal rules governing their use lag behind. Meanwhile, a proliferation of state-level chatbot safety bills has sparked debate. An August 2026 ITIF report warns that nearly 100 proposed state bills rely on flawed age-verification mandates that compromise adult privacy, advocating instead for device-level 'child flags' to protect minors without creating massive, breach-prone data silos.
State chatbot legislation proliferation
- ▪As of August 2026, the Future of Privacy Forum was tracking 98 chatbot-specific bills across 34 states, alongside three federal proposals.
- ▪As of mid-July 2026, 15 U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, and Colorado, had signed chatbot-specific legislation into law.
- ▪The federal GUARD Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in late April 2026, proposes banning AI companion chatbots for minors and requiring mandatory age verification.
- ▪The bipartisan CHAT Act 2.0, introduced in July 2026 by U.S. Senators Jon Husted and Andy Kim, proposes tiered chatbot categories to distinguish general-purpose AI from companion chatbots.
Age verification privacy tradeoffs
- ▪Age verification mandates force chatbot platforms to collect sensitive user data, such as government-issued IDs or biometric scans, which are then transmitted to third-party vendors.
- ▪Security breaches at age verification vendors, including AU10TIX in 2024, Zendesk in 2025, and Persona in 2026, exposed user identification documents and photos.
- ▪An Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report published on August 10, 2026, warns that state chatbot bills requiring age verification impose structural privacy costs on adults.
OS-level age verification alternative
- ▪The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation proposes that Congress require device operating systems to implement a parent-controlled 'child flag' to signal age status to apps.
- ▪California's Digital Age Assurance Act, signed in October 2025, requires operating system providers to maintain account systems where users indicate their age categories via signals.
Congressional AI adoption outpacing oversight
- ▪AI chatbots are spreading through the United States Congress for tasks such as writing speeches and sorting constituent mail faster than rules governing their use are established.
- ▪Representative Anna Paulina Luna's office submitted an amendment to an annual defense bill in the summer of 2026 along with an AI-generated summary of the proposed change.
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