Kids would be banned from using chatbots in package of bills regulating AI in Minnesota Legislature
Children under 18 would no longer be able to use chatbots if a bill at the Minnesota Legislature passes this session. It's one proposal among several targeting artificial intelligence with new regulations.
At a time when politics feels polarizing, putting guardrails around this technology is a unique issue that attracts bipartisan support. DFL Sen. Erin Maye Quade found an otherwise unlikely coauthor in GOP Sen. Eric Lucero to put age restrictions on the chatbots, among other measures.
"Tech companies have shown time and time again that they are unwilling to regulate themselves and actually provide safety for consumers, especially children," said Maye Quade.
The chatbot bill, discussed in a Senate committee Monday, received pushback from the technology industry, which said it, if approved, would make Minnesota an outlier even as other states contemplate safety rules for children on the apps.
"The question with Senate File 1857 is not whether or not kids deserve protection, it's whether this bill's approach cuts them off from useful tools," Jarrett Catlin, state AI policy advisor at TechNet, told the panel.
Among the other proposals aimed at regulating the rapidly changing industry are prohibiting health insurers from using AI to determine if a procedure is medically necessary and requiring that businesses disclose if they are using the technology to interact with customers, and give them an option to speak with a real person instead of a computer.
Another bill would block AI for surveillance pricing, halting the use of algorithms to generate varying prices for the same goods and services to different consumers.
State lawmakers a few years ago took steps to regulate deepfakes, or manipulated images, audio and video, prohibiting their use to influence the outcome of an election and making it illegal to create and distribute sexually explicit material of someone generated from AI.
Both Republicans and Democrats alike at the Minnesota State Capitol believe that in the absence of federal regulations, states must step in, even if the Trump administration is attempting to limit the patchwork of rules across the country.
"I have long said the law is not keeping up with technology, said Lucero. "Technology has been innovating since the beginning of time, and as that technology is adopted in the private sector for use and in the public sector by the government, it can create a direct threat to our individual liberties."
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday ran out of time to discuss all of the tech-regulating bills on the schedule, so the discussion will revive again next week.
"I don't hate AI. If it's done right, the promise of AI and other technological advancements could be tremendous, but the way that consumer-facing AI has been rolled out as a five-alarm fire for our society and has devastating consequences and deadly consequences for both humans and our constitutional rights," Maye Quade told reporters.
Limiting "reverse" search warrants
One measure, which doesn't directly target artificial intelligence but has implications for data privacy, did get a full vetting during the panel. It would prohibit "reverse" search warrants seeking location and keyword-search data in most circumstances. These court orders seek information about anyone who was in a particular place at a specific time or visited a particular website or searched for a particular time, as opposed to search warrants targeting an individual.
Lucero and Maye Quade say such warrants run afoul of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"We want to make sure those time-tested principles are protected in the digital realm," Lucero said.
But law enforcement — including the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association — pushed back, arguing that the change would hinder their ability to conduct investigations and solve crimes. Lucero noted that police officers can't seek such data informally; they have to prove to a judge there is probable cause.
Jay Henthorne, police chief in Richfield and president of the association, said the measure would make it "significantly harder" to identify suspects in serious crimes.
"The bill could result in fewer crimes being solved. In many modern investigations, digital evidence is the only available evidence," Henthorne told the committee. "Crimes today often occur without witnesses and without physical evidence. Removing access to location data may mean fewer suspects identified in fewer cases, cleared."
The bill is up for consideration as part of a broader public safety package at the end of session.