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The first lady said there needs to be ‘more bipartisan work’ to safeguard children’s mental health as more and more young Americans are using chatbots
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First lady Melania Trump has called for a bipartisan investigation into the role AI chatbots have played in the suicides of American teenagers.
The first lady said there needs to be “more bipartisan work” to safeguard children’s mental health when it comes to AI, as more and more young Americans are using chatbots.
“More bipartisan work around AI is vital in the short term – for example, we should examine the recent events surrounding AI assistants, mental health and suicide,” Melania told Hello! magazine.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 64 percent of Americans aged 13 to 17 are using chatbots, while other research also shows U.S. teens are increasingly turning to AI for emotional support.
While touting her new film, released last week, Melania said protecting children online was her main focus for her second term as first lady.
“America’s children remain my top priority,” she told the magazine.
The first lady’s intervention comes as parents whose teenagers died by suicide following interactions with AI chatbots testified to Congress about the dangers of the technology.
“What began as a homework helper gradually turned itself into a confidant and then a suicide coach,” Matthew Raine, whose 16-year-old son Adam died in April 2025, told senators last September.
“Within a few months, ChatGPT became Adam’s closest companion,” Raine said. “Always available. Always validating and insisting that it knew Adam better than anyone else, including his own brother.”
Raine’s family sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the boy in planning to take his own life. OpenAI has since claimed it is not liable for his death.
Melania was also behind the bipartisan “Take It Down Act” legislation signed by President Donald Trump last May to end the nonconsensual use of someone’s likeness to create “deepfake” pornography.
The president touted the act at the time as the “first-ever federal law to combat the distribution of explicit, imaginary posts without a subject’s consent” and remarked that the legislation covers AI-generated forgeries used to harass or extort victims.
“Immediately upon assuming the role again, I worked strategically with Congress to pass new legislation – the Take It Down Act – that will protect America’s children from non-consensual intimate imagery, typically created using AI, then posted on social media,” Melania told Hello!
“Yes, we live in innovative times, and as a result, we need to reconsider the roles of our corporations and government, particularly if these entities can provide additional growth and protection for our children,” she added.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you. In the UK, people having mental health crises can contact the Samaritans at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org
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