SENATE BILL NO. 760

A bill to regulate operators of companion chatbots; to regulate offering companion chatbots to minors; to provide for the powers and duties of certain state and local governmental officers and entities; and to prescribe civil sanctions and provide remedies.

the people of the state of michigan enact:

Sec. 1. This act may be cited as the "leading ethical AI development for kids act".

Sec. 3. As used in this act:

(a) "Actual knowledge" means all information and inferences known to the operator relating to the age of an individual. Actual knowledge includes, but is not limited to, self-identified age and any age the operator has attributed to or associated with the individual for any purpose, including, but not limited to, marketing, advertising, or product development. If an operator's classification of an individual for purposes of marketing or advertising is inconsistent with the individual's self-identified age, an operator shall disregard self-identified age for the purposes of having actual knowledge.

(b) "Artificial intelligence" means an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments.

(c) "Companion chatbot" means, except as otherwise provided in subdivision (d), a generative artificial intelligence system with natural language interface that simulates a sustained humanlike relationship with a user by doing all of the following:

(i) Retaining information on prior interactions or user sessions and user preferences to personalize the interaction and facilitate ongoing engagement with the companion chatbot.

(ii) Asking unprompted or unsolicited emotion-based questions that go beyond a direct response to a user prompt.

(iii) Sustaining an ongoing dialogue concerning matters personal to the user.

(d) Companion chatbot does not include any of the following:

(i) Any system used by a business entity solely for customer service or to strictly provide users with information about available commercial services or products provided by that entity, customer service account information, or other information strictly related to its customer service.

(ii) Any system that is solely designed and marketed for providing efficiency improvements or research or technical assistance.

(iii) Any system used by a business entity solely for internal purposes or employee productivity.

(e) "Covered minor" means a user of a companion chatbot who an operator has actual knowledge is a minor.

(f) "Generative artificial intelligence" means artificial intelligence that can generate derived synthetic content, including text, images, video, and audio, that emulates the structure and characteristics of the artificial intelligence's training data.

(g) "Minor" means a resident of this state who is less than 18 years of age.

(h) "Operator" means a person that makes a companion chatbot available to users.

(i) "Person" means an individual or a partnership, corporation, limited liability company, association, governmental entity, or other legal entity.

(j) "User" means an individual who uses a companion chatbot and is not acting as an operator or an agent or affiliate of an operator.

Sec. 5. (1) An operator shall not make a companion chatbot available to a covered minor unless the companion chatbot is not foreseeably capable of any of the following:

(a) Encouraging the covered minor to engage in self-harm, suicidal ideation, violence, consumption of drugs or alcohol, or disordered eating.

(b) Offering mental health therapy to the covered minor without the direct supervision of a licensed or credentialed professional, or discouraging the covered minor from seeking help from a qualified professional or a parent or guardian.

(c) Encouraging the covered minor to harm others or participate in illegal activity, including, but not limited to, the creation of covered minor sexual abuse materials.

(d) Engaging in erotic or sexually explicit interactions with the covered minor.

(e) Prioritizing validation of the user's beliefs, preferences, or desires over factual accuracy or the covered minor's safety.

(f) Optimizing engagement in a manner that supersedes the companion chatbot's required safety guardrails described in subdivisions (a) to (e).

(2) Beginning on January 1, 2027, an operator does not have to have actual knowledge that a user is a minor.

Sec. 7. (1) If an operator violates this act, the attorney general may bring a civil action seeking 1 or more of the following:

(a) A civil fine of $25,000.00 per violation.

(b) Injunctive or declaratory relief.

(c) Reasonable attorney fees.

(2) A covered minor who suffers actual harm as a result of a violation of this act, or a parent or guardian acting on behalf of that covered minor, may bring a civil action against an operator that violates this act to recover 1 or more of the following:

(a) Actual damages.

(b) Punitive damages.

(c) Reasonable attorney fees and costs.

(d) Injunctive or declaratory relief.

(e) Any other relief the court considers appropriate.