California State Sen. Steve Padilla (D-San Diego) announced a bill in the state legislature Monday that would make it illegal to manufacture or sell toys equipped with an AI Toy chatbot. The ban would be in effect for toys made for kids and would continue until Jan. 1, 2031, according to the legislative counsel’s digest of the bill (Senate Bill 867).
Allowing four years to develop regulations that protect our children from the very real impacts of dangerous AI interactions was, Padilla argued, the purpose of the bill’s moratorium on these products, according to a press release.
Padilla also wrote another AI safety law that mandates that chatbot controllers implement all appropriate protections, while giving families a private right to sue developers who don’t comply or act recklessly, the release said.
That law, Senate Bill 243, was signed by California’s governor on Oct. 13, according to the state legislature’s website.
Padilla introduced the bill, called the Curbing Realistic Exploitative Electronic Pedophilic Robots (CREEPER) Act on Monday in response to news of two deaths involving teens who killed themselves after interacting with chat bots; a U.S. PIRG Education Fund report that found AI chatbot toys could sometimes engage children in discussions that weren’t suitable for their age group; and news that toy manufacturer Mattel in June announced it would use OpenAI to convert its products into AI-powered gadgets, according to the press release.
“Our safety standards around this kind of tech are still in their infancy and will need to expand as rapidly as the capabilities of this tech do,” Padilla said in the release. “Pausing the sale of these chatbot-integrated toys gives us time to develop policies, protocols and safety measures to ensure that this is done responsibly.
Padilla’s previous bill, Senate Bill 243, introduced in July, was one of the first major attempts in the United States to regulate AI companions, particularly regarding their impact on minors.
So the FTC announced in September that it’s looking into the impact of AI Toy chatbots on children and teens and has sent orders to seven AI chatbot providers for information on how those companies assess or monitor for “any health- or other safety-related effects” associated with their technology among young users.
