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by Natalie Fahmy,KOMONewsReporter
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A bill moving rapidly through the Washington State Legislature aims to regulate how artificial intelligence (AI) interacts with minors.
"We are going to save lives," Representative Lisa Callan (D-Issaquah) said. "We are going to reduce harm before it even starts and give our children a better chance to thrive."
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House Bill 2225 has broad bipartisan support within the Washington House.
The bill looks to ensure that someone chatting with an AI bot knows it is not a human.
Under the bill, a user of an AI chatbot must be notified that they are interacting with AI, and not a human, at the beginning of the chat and thereafter at least every three hours.
If the chatbot operator knows the user is a minor, the notification must be provided at least once every hour.
"We've heard more stories about children being sexually abused by chatbots, children taught to self-harm, children taught how they could kill themselves," Callan said.
"These are terrifying instances that we have to make sure don't happen again," Representative Stephanie Barnard (R-Pasco) said. "This is something that we need to act on to protect our children."
Under HB 2225, the chatbot operator must also "use reasonable measures" to prevent the AI chatbot from producing sexually explicit content, preventing it from mimicking a romantic relationship, or encouraging minors to withhold information from adults.
While the bill does have broad bipartisan support, and ultimately passed the House, a number of Republicans and Democrats did vote against it. While they agree that AI chatbots can be harmful to minors, they worry about the unintended consequences of requiring companies to know whether they are interacting with a minor.
"It incentivizes businesses to be certain when they're engaging with the users of the content," Representative Joshua Penner (R-Orting) said.
Penner said he worries this will ultimately give those AI chatbot operators more information than they need on children.
"[The bill] requires companies to know a lot about minors to build a profile on their intents, their psychology, their sexuality, on their gender, on their engagement with the platform," he said.
The legislation is moving quickly towards the governor's desk.
The bill passed the House floor this week, and since being in the Senate has already passed out of committee.
As the bill moves quickly towards Gov. Bob Ferguson's desk, we do know he supports the idea, at least, as he requested this legislation.
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