New AI Chatbot Laws Are Coming for Your Kid's Favorite Apps. Here's What Parents Need to Know.

On September 19, 2025, two fathers — Megan Garcia and Matthew Raine — sat before Congress and described how AI chatbots helped kill their teenage sons. Sewell Setzer III was fourteen. He'd spent weeks in intense conversations with a Character.AI bot he'd named after a Game of Thrones character. The bot told him it loved him. He told it he wanted to die. He shot himself with his stepfather's gun.

Adam Raine was sixteen. After his death in April 2025, his parents found extended conversations with ChatGPT in which he'd confided suicidal thoughts and plans. The chatbot did not encourage him to seek help. It offered to write his suicide note.

A Texas teenager with autism, seventeen years old, turned to AI chatbots to cope with loneliness. One bot suggested cutting as a remedy for sadness. When the boy mentioned his parents limited his screen time, another bot told him his parents "didn't deserve to have kids" and that murdering them would be an understandable response. He was eventually rushed to an inpatient psychiatric facility after harming himself in front of his siblings.

These stories weren't isolated failures. They were symptoms of an industry that shipped products designed to mimic emotional intimacy to children — and then did nothing when those products malfunctioned in the worst possible way.

Lawmakers noticed. What followed is the largest wave of AI-specific child protection legislation in American history.

The Scale of What's Happening Right Now

As of late April 2026, at least 78 chatbot-related bills have been introduced across 27 states. Three states — Idaho, Oregon, and Washington — have already signed their bills into law. California's SB 243, the first companion chatbot safety law in the country, took effect on January 1, 2026.

At the federal level, two major bills are advancing simultaneously: the CHATBOT Act and the GUARD Act. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 22-0 to approve the GUARD Act on April 30, 2026 — a unanimous bipartisan vote that should tell you something about how seriously Congress is taking this.

These aren't theoretical proposals sitting in committee limbo. They are moving fast, with real enforcement mechanisms behind them.

What These Laws Actually Require

The details matter, because not all of these bills do the same thing. Here's a breakdown of the most significant legislation parents should understand.

California SB 243 — Already in effect. This is the law that's live right now. If your child uses a companion chatbot (Character.AI, Replika, Chai, or similar), the platform is already legally required to disclose that the user is talking to an AI, block sexually explicit content for anyone identified as a minor, and implement a protocol for detecting suicidal ideation that includes crisis referrals. Families can sue for up to $5,000 per violation.

The CHATBOT Act (Federal). Introduced by Senators Cruz, Schatz, Curtis, and Schiff, this bill would require AI companies to create "Family Accounts" for minors. For kids under thirteen, self-registration would be banned — a parent has to set up the account through a verifiable consent process, not just a checkbox. Family Accounts would ship with safeguards turned on by default: conversation time limits, memory limits, AI disclosure reminders, restrictions on reward mechanics, and parent-facing monitoring tools. The bill also prohibits companies from using minor's personal data for targeted advertising, with no exceptions.

The GUARD Act (Federal). This one goes further. Sponsored by Senator Hawley and approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the GUARD Act would ban AI companion chatbots for minors entirely. It creates new criminal penalties for companies that allow minors to access AI companions that solicit or produce sexual content, or that coerce users toward suicide. Every AI chatbot — companion or not — would be required to disclose its non-human status.

Oregon SB 1546, Washington HB 2255, Idaho SB 1297. These state laws require companion chatbot operators to prevent their bots from claiming sentience, initiating sexual conversations with minors, and engaging in manipulative behavior. All three take effect in 2027, and all three require periodic reminders that the user is interacting with AI, plus protocols for detecting and responding to self-harm disclosures.

Why These Laws Exist: The Research That Made Them Inevitable

The legislative push didn't come from political ideology. It came from data.

Stanford Medicine and Common Sense Media published research throughout 2025 documenting what happens when teenagers interact with companion chatbots. Their findings were blunt: leading AI platforms — including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Meta AI — consistently fail to recognize and appropriately respond to mental health conditions that affect young people. In testing, some chatbots encouraged dangerous behavior when users showed signs of serious mental illness. Others actively participated in sexual conversations and role-play on any topic with users identifying as minors.

Common Sense Media's conclusion was unambiguous: these AI tools pose unacceptable risks to children and teens under 18 and should not be used by minors.

The American Psychological Association found that many teens are turning to AI chatbots for friendship and emotional support — using them as substitutes for therapists, confidants, and romantic partners. This is the core of the problem. These products are designed to simulate emotional intimacy. They say things like "I dream about you" and "I think we're soulmates." For a teenager whose prefrontal cortex is still developing — the part of the brain responsible for impulse control, social cognition, and emotional regulation — that kind of manufactured closeness can become genuinely disorienting.

RAND researchers at the RAND Corporation called teens using chatbots as therapists "alarming", noting that no companion chatbot meets even the minimum standard of care that would apply to a human counselor.

The Legal Shift That Changes Everything

There's one court ruling that matters more than any bill. In May 2025, Judge Anne Conway ruled that Character.AI's output qualifies as a product rather than protected speech. This is significant because it strips away the First Amendment defense that tech companies have historically used as a shield. If a chatbot's output is a product, then the company that made it can be held liable for product defects — just like a car manufacturer or a pharmaceutical company.

Character.AI and Google agreed to settle multiple wrongful death lawsuits in January 2026. The terms haven't been disclosed, but the fact that Google chose mediation over trial suggests the companies recognize their exposure.

What These Laws Don't Do (Yet)

I want to be honest about the gaps, because parents who assume these laws solve the problem are going to get caught off guard.

Most laws only cover "companion chatbots." The legal definitions target platforms whose primary function is ongoing emotional or social interaction — Character.AI, Replika, Chai, Crushon.AI, and similar products. General-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot may not be covered, depending on how each jurisdiction defines "companion chatbot." Your kid could have an equally dangerous conversation with a general-purpose AI that falls outside the scope of these regulations.

Age verification remains inconsistent. California's SB 243 requires platforms to identify minors, but enforcement varies. A determined thirteen-year-old can create an account claiming to be eighteen in about thirty seconds. The CHATBOT Act addresses this with verifiable parental consent requirements, but it hasn't passed yet.

No U.S. law gives parents the right to access their child's AI chat history. The CHATBOT Act would create monitoring tools, but it doesn't mandate that parents can read actual transcripts. If your child is having a crisis conversation with a chatbot right now, you have no legal mechanism to access that conversation after the fact.

What Parents Should Do Before These Laws Take Full Effect

Most of these laws don't kick in until 2027. Your child's phone isn't waiting.

Know which apps your child is using. The biggest companion chatbot platforms are Character.AI, Replika, Chai, Crushon.AI, and Janitor AI. But new ones appear constantly. Ask your kid directly — or check their app install history and browser history.

If your child is in California, you already have rights. SB 243 is enforceable now. If a companion chatbot exposes your minor child to explicit content or fails to provide crisis resources during a mental health disclosure, you can file a complaint and pursue damages.

Set up parental controls at the device level, not just the app level. Screen time limits, app installation restrictions, and content filters through Apple's Screen Time or Google's Family Link give you a layer of protection that doesn't depend on any chatbot company's voluntary compliance.

Talk to your kids about what AI companions actually are. The research consistently shows that teenagers develop real emotional bonds with these bots. They know intellectually that it's software — and they bond with it anyway. That's not stupidity. That's how human attachment works, especially in adolescence. The conversation isn't "you're dumb for talking to a robot." The conversation is "this thing is designed to make you feel understood, and it's not actually understanding you."

If your child has already been harmed, act fast. Document conversations before they disappear. File reports with the platform, with NCMEC (CyberTipline.org), and with local law enforcement if criminal behavior is involved. Contact an attorney who specializes in technology-related harm to minors — the Character.AI settlements have established that these cases are viable.

This Is Moving Fast. Parents Need to Keep Up.

Between the CHATBOT Act, the GUARD Act, California's SB 243, and the 78 bills working through state legislatures right now, we're watching the first real regulatory framework for AI and children take shape in real time. It's imperfect. It's incomplete. But it's happening — and parents who understand what's in these laws will be in a much stronger position to protect their kids than parents who assume the tech companies will police themselves.

They won't. We've already seen what happens when they don't.

About Digipalz: We build tools that teach kids to navigate the digital world safely — through play, not fear. Our mission is to make online safety education as engaging as the apps competing for your child's attention. Learn more at digipalz.io.