Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
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By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | An increasingly testy standoff between the Trump White House and state lawmakers of both parties came to South Carolina this week as a state Senate panel began moving two bills that aim to impose strict new regulations on artificial intelligence chatbots.
The bills, which supporters tell Statehouse Report are being combined into one package for a last-minute legislative push before the session ends May 14, would create what sponsors call legal guardrails for both adult consumers and children around popular chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude.
The guardrails would include age verification and parental consent, restrictions on the storage and use of users’ personal data, and mandated notifications that chatbots are not licensed professionals like doctors, lawyers and therapists. Under the legislation, the state attorney general, county attorneys and private citizens could all sue for damages of up to $5,000 per violation.
“We’re coming to a point with this emerging technology that we’ve got to start flexing our AI legislative muscles,” Charleston Republican Sen. Matt Leber, a bill sponsor, told the panel on April 15. “This has very light guardrails, but it does put responsibility on the companies to make sure that their AI is not going to be used in a nefarious way.”
That approach puts Leber’s legislation in direct conflict with President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pushed for federal legislation banning such bills, and reportedly twisted GOP leaders’ arms to kill similar bills in Florida and Utah.
“A patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race,” the White House said in a March 20 policy statement that called on Congress to pass a federal law protecting children and consumers.
University of South Carolina economist Joseph Von Nessen told Statehouse Report the White House’s concerns reflected textbook business worries about regulatory complexity.
To illustrate the issue, he said to imagine a call-center business that places calls into multiple states. In one state, chatbots are allowed. In another, they’re forbidden. And in another, they can only be used in very specific ways. Now, multiply that by 50 states.
“Navigating those sets of rules could lead to real inefficiencies,” Von Nessen said.
Regarding concerns about innovation being stifled as 50 states bring various regulatory frameworks forward, he said the worry is rooted in uncertainty.
“Uncertainty breeds paralysis,” he said, noting that that can be true whether the regulations under consideration are ultimately beneficial or not. “When businesses don’t know what to expect, they can’t make strategic plans on how to grow, adapt to the market and move forward.”
In an April 16 interview, Leber said he’s not unsympathetic to those concerns. But with Congress increasingly unable or unwilling to pass legislation on issues of public concern, he said, the states are being forced to step in.
“We can’t let the protection of South Carolinians be held in limbo because those guys can’t get their act together,” Leber said, noting that state action can help break the federal logjam.
“Oftentimes, when the states act, they begin to take the issue more seriously and start to move a little more quickly,” he said.
As for the need, Leber pointed to “horror stories” senators heard in April 15 testimony from educators and parents groups, including documented instances of user suicide and highly sexualized chats with minors.
One of those parents was Fort Mill resident Kimberly Long of Mothers Against Media Addiction, who argued that children needed explicit legal protections from the mental health risks she said AIs pose.
“The dangers embedded in the rise of AI and chatbots are not the arena in which to give kids free rein,” Long said.
Charleston-area clinical psychologist Viktoriya Magid told Statehouse Report she’s familiar with those concerns, though in her practice, the chatbot-related issues she sees tend to involve patients who don’t realize they’re “talking to themselves” when they chat with a bot. And that, she said, can lead to erroneous, garbage-in, garbage-out self-diagnoses.
“What people don’t understand is that it’s going to give you advice based on what you feed it,” Magid said. “So I have folks coming in thinking they’re having these insights when it’s really just their own blind spots repackaged with a diagnosis that’s usually wrong.”
That’s precisely the kind of problem supporters say the bill tries to address with regular notifications that chatbots aren’t professionals.
Nevertheless, several business groups, including bankers, video game manufacturers and customer service industry representatives, testified against the legislation as written.
Specifically, they argued that its definition of chatbot — “an algorithmic or automated system that generates information through text, audio, image, or video in a manner that simulates interpersonal interactions or conversations including artificial intelligence” — is too broad, and would create expensive liability risks for everyday businesses the bill isn’t aimed at.
Witness Tom Mann, Southern state policy manager of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, expanded on that concern in an April 15 interview, telling Statehouse Report the definition would likely capture educational tools, productivity applications, research assistants and more.
“These things don’t fall into the high-risk category that legislators seem to be focused on, like companionship or maybe romantic chatbots,” Mann said, noting that some states, like California, have written legislation with specific carve-outs for “safe” business chatbot uses.
Leber and other senators at Wednesday’s hearing said they were open to amendments to address businesses’ concerns, but warned advocates to get their proposed changes in quickly, because time is running short and the legislative train is on the tracks.
“Folks, I would just encourage you to work with the sponsor or staff to get those amendments in,” committee Chairman Sean Bennett, R-Dorchester, told business representatives pointedly as the hearing closed. “At the next meeting, we are going to be moving forward.”
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | Earmarks — or what lawmakers these days prefer to call “community investments” — will return to South Carolina next week when the S.C. Senate takes up its version of the $15 billion 2026-2027 state budget that passed the S.C. House last month.
These controversial spending items, which essentially boil down to legislator-directed spending on in-district projects, can range from critical funding for local infrastructure to grants for community arts festivals. Earmarks have been called “pork-barrel spending” in recent years.
After watching earmark spending explode from $30 million in 2019 to more than $400 million in 2024, lawmakers eliminated the items entirely from last year’s budget, pledging to reform the earmark reporting system to make it more transparent and accountable before bringing it back.
With some of those changes now in place, particularly municipal oversight of earmarks given to local nonprofits, the Senate Finance Committee included a number of earmarks in its draft budget last week. Those spending measures — which include small items like a $20,000 grant for senior programming at a Newberry County Rosenwald School and major projects like millions of dollars for rural water and sewer upgrades — will be debated on the Senate floor when budget deliberations begin at noon April 21.
After passage in the Senate, the budget will return to the S.C. House, where members will then have an opportunity to add earmarks of their own.
Elections: 10 Republican candidates face off in forum for S.C.’s 1st congressional district. Ten candidates for South Carolina’s first congressional district answered questions at a Republican Party forum on Thursday.
Statehouse: Effort to reform how S.C. judges get picked poised for a quiet death in state Senate. A much-hyped effort earlier this year to remove the state legislature from its long-standing role vetting judicial candidates appears poised to die a quiet death in the state Senate.
S.C. Commerce Dept. could face inquiry over $150 million Scout Motors overrun. South Carolina budget writers this month rejected a S.C. Department of Commerce request to cover $150 million in cost overruns it incurred in site preparations for Scout Motors’ new Blythewood manufacturing facility.
Chemicals released in N.C. threaten S.C. rivers. Forever chemicals polluting North Carolina’s Lumber River, listed in a new report at the nation’s fourth-most endangered river nationally, are polluting S.C. rivers.
Former VP Harris says she’s ‘thinking about’ another run for president during S.C. visit. During a Columbia stop on her national book tour for “107 Days,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s considering another run for the presidency in 2028.
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | A state Senate panel is actively considering a bill by Sen. Richard Cash, R-Anderson, to outlaw virtually all abortions from the moment of conception in the Palmetto State, with no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities. Under current S.C. law, most abortions are prohibited after six weeks, a status quo Gov. Henry McMaster has strongly and repeatedly endorsed.
Despite some momentum to move the stricter bill to the Senate floor, Edgefield Republican Majority Leader Shane Massey told reporters this week that with less than a month to go in the 2026 session, time was running out for controversial legislation like the ban. “We’ve had no conversation among the caucus about that bill at all,” he said.
DOGE S.C.: Multiple bills promising to cut the state workforce and the regulations they enforce have been introduced for consideration in 2026. In particular, House GOP leaders have pledged to get their “Small Business Regulatory Freedom Act” passed through the S.C. Senate this session. LATEST: The bill is currently being marked up — and amended — in a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
Taxes: McMaster held a ceremonial signing this week for a bill to cut the state’s top tax rate from 6% to 5.21%. Further property and income tax cuts are advancing in both chambers. LATEST: The S.C. Senate on April 1 voted down a House bill that would have extended federal tax breaks under President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” to state taxpayers.
Judicial selection: A bill that would give the governor more power in selecting state judges passed the S.C. House 86-25 on Feb. 11, sending it to the Senate, where it currently resides in the Senate Judiciary Committee. LATEST: Massey told reporters on April 15 the bill is unlikely to come up for a vote in the Senate before the session ends on May 14.
Immigration: Legislation requiring local law enforcement agencies to assist in federal immigration enforcement passed the S.C. House 85-30 along party lines on April 1. LATEST: The bill is now awaiting further action in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Juvenile justice: Two bills have passed the House — one making it easier to try 16 and 17 year olds as adults and another to mandate fingerprinting when juveniles come into the system. LATEST: Both bills are now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which began considering them last week.
Concurrency: A bill by Beaufort Republican Sen. Tom Davis that would allow local governments to limit development in areas with insufficient infrastructure was amended and advanced on March 12 by the Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee.
Rolling back affirmative action and DEI: Several bills are still currently awaiting consideration, including one to codify Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive order ending affirmative action in state contracting.
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for poking a little fun in just the right way. This week, he mulls the implications of former Gov. Mark Sanford running again for the seat he held twice in Congress.
Editor’s Note: This commentary first was published in January 2015. It’s still true today.
Commentary by Andy Brack | It’s time for South Carolina to get a new nickname that better reflects what really happens at the Statehouse in Columbia.
Rather than the common “Palmetto State” or distant and mostly forgotten “Iodine State,” we suggest the appropriate moniker is “Squeaky Wheel State.” It illustrates how those who holler loudest about something get the most attention, particularly from a public policy perspective.
If you haven’t yet learned, South Carolina’s culture places more emphasis in reacting to problems instead of planning to deal with issues before they become problems. That’s just the way we’ve rolled.
The latest squeaky wheel? Roads, a $42 billion infrastructure problem over the next 30 years that has lawmakers scrambling for some way to keep the highway network acceptable so it doesn’t reduce competitiveness and harm the transfer of goods or people from point A to point B. Poor roads are not a new problem. The eruption of the issue now is completely logical. What else did leaders think would eventually happen after under-investing in road and bridge maintenance for a generation?
But in South Carolina, leaders often put off what they should do today until tomorrow. It’s just part of the state’s stubborn culture — “We’re proud to live here but don’t tell us what to do. We’ll do what we want when we want to do it.”
If you start looking for policy “squeaks,” or the need for reactive solutions because someone is hollering or things have gotten so bad that they can no longer be avoided, they’re not hard to find. Some recent ones:
Squeak: Property tax reform. After Charleston blue bloods whined and moaned about residential property tax rates, lawmakers enacted reform that slashed rates, but kept them high for businesses. Wealthier folks saw great savings from the measure, Act 388. Middle-class South Carolinians shouldered the burden.
Squeak: Hacking. After hackers exploited personal information of millions of residents and businesses in the largest hacking ever of a state, the Department of Revenue finally had to beef up information security.
Squeak: Changes at DSS. When people finally understood how many children were dying while in the care of the state Department of Social Services, the cry for reform reached the level that lawmakers started working on it.
Squeak: Ethics. When two of the state’s top officials — a lieutenant governor and a House speaker — went down for ethics and corruption problems in about as many years, lawmakers finally got more serious about toughening ethics rules. (They still have a lot of work to do.)
There are major downsides to reacting, instead of being proactive. By reacting to those who holler loudest or dealing with problems that have festered so long that they can no longer be avoided, other challenges — poverty, health care, environment, income inequality — are pushed to the back burner, where (guess what) they fester until they mature in squeakiness.
“We don’t have a plan” as a state, observes former state Sen. Phil Leventis, a Sumter Democrat who served in Columbia for more than 30 years. “We value too highly in our consideration those things which we are most aware.” For example, we would get real concerned about earthquakes and being ready for them after one hit when, in fact, we should have prepared long before.
“The fact that we are reactionary is only part of the problem,” he said. “Being reactionary sets up a scenario for a reaction that is not well-considered because it’s based more on fear and recent events than it is some kind of considered reasoning. It’s kind of a double trap.”
How did South Carolina get this way, particularly when it started off as a relatively progressive business colony that was proactive for its day in tolerating different religions and pushing for a strong central government after the Revolutionary War? The answer is probably rooted in the state’s post-Reconstruction reaction that disenfranchised blacks and sustained the plantation culture through tenant farming and the textile mill system.
We’ve put off the medicine for better public policy for too long. Now it’s time to shed the shackles of how we’ve always done things and start planning so that we can stop being the Squeaky Wheel state.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
Commentary by Amanda Arthur | South Carolina legislators are considering an increase in state fees on electric vehicles (EVs) to $400 every two years, up from the current $120 biennial fee. That’s a 233% increase.
This EV fee is paid in addition to the standard costs required for all vehicles, including registration fees, local property taxes and a one-time infrastructure maintenance fee.
While the stated reason for this exponential increase—roadway repair funding—is important (potholes aren’t going to fix themselves), our leaders should carefully weigh the broader economic and national security implications of this decision. Placing disproportionate financial burdens on EV adoption creates new problems rather than solving existing ones.
As a U.S. Army veteran once deployed in Asia, energy use was not an abstract concept. It was a constant operational constraint. Modern military operations depend heavily on fuel logistics, from transporting supplies to powering advanced defense systems. Every gallon of fuel requires extensive coordination, increases costs and creates vulnerabilities. Reducing dependence on fuel through use of advanced energy technologies and domestically generated energy sources like solar and battery storage strengthen operational readiness, lower long-term costs and reduce risk.
Expanding EV adoption supports that same principle at home by reducing America’s dependence on oil—one of our most persistent national security risks tied to global energy markets. Discouraging this transition by implementing an EV fee much higher than the current rate keeps the United States tied to volatile global energy markets that competing nations can (and sometimes do) influence. This is a clear national security risk, and it feels especially tangible today as Americans watch gas prices surge amid instability in the Middle East and disruptions to critical shipping routes like the Strait of Hormuz.
There is also a clear path forward: transitioning to American-produced energy. As the United States connects more diverse energy sources—particularly solar and battery storage—to the grid, the transition to electric vehicles plays a critical role in reducing reliance on global fuel markets.
A more nuanced view of national security must also include economics. The United States is in a global race to build a competitive EV industry and secure domestic supply chains for batteries and key industrial materials used in battery manufacturing. Reducing reliance on overseas competitors—particularly China, which dominates much of this market—requires continued investment and adoption of these technologies here at home.
South Carolina is already part of that solution. Right here in the Palmetto State, companies like Redwood Materials and Phenogy are working to build a domestic battery supply chain, while manufacturers such as Scout Motors and BMW are investing in the future of next-generation transportation. South Carolina is also becoming a hub for the entire electric vehicle supply chain, including EV component manufacturing leaders like Envision AESC and Cirba Solutions.
South Carolina’s EV sector is not just about innovation—it’s also about jobs, economic development and long-term affordability. EVs typically offer a lower total cost of ownership than gasoline-powered vehicles, which matters for families already navigating rising costs of living. Policies that discourage adoption don’t just affect consumers—they signal to companies like Scout Motors, BMW, and Redwood Materials that South Carolina may be less committed to the next generation of vehicle technology. That kind of signal risks slowing investment, weakening local job growth, and limiting the economic momentum already taking root here
If the goal is fairness, road funding should be based on how much we use the roads—not which fuel powers our vehicles.
A flat $400 fee is not usage-based; it requires drivers to pay the same amount regardless of how much they actually use the roads. More effective, equitable alternatives already exist. Mileage-based user fees, like a program currently being piloted in Utah, charge drivers based on how much they actually drive. Other options, such as weight-based registration or modest tire fees, better reflect real road wear while remaining technology-neutral.
Domestic energy security for South Carolina means diversifying how we power our vehicles and grow our economy. Penalizing that progress drives us in the wrong direction. We shouldn’t inequitably tax the very transition that strengthens our economy and national security.
Amanda Arthur of Columbia is the distributed energy manager at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
The Mystery Photo took a hiatus for the past few weeks due to an unexpected illness. But we’re now back and challenge you to identify what and where this photo was taken. Send your best guess – plus hometown and name – to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Please send us your thoughts about politics and policy in South Carolina, but make sure to leave phone numbers and hometowns to help us verify them for publication. We publish non-defamatory comments, but unless you provide your contact information – name and hometown, plus a phone number used only by us for verification – we can’t publish your views.
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