Senate Advances GUARD Act to Ban AI Companions for Minors

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 22-0 on April 30, 2026, to advance the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue (GUARD) Act. Sponsored by Josh Hawley and Mark Warner, the legislation would ban AI companion chatbots for minors and require providers to verify ages through government identification. It criminalizes chatbots that encourage minors to engage in suicide or sexually explicit behavior and imposes $100,000 penalties for bots promoting physical violence. Chatbots under this law must disclose their non-human status every 30 minutes and are prohibited from claiming to be licensed professionals.

In a competing approach, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz introduced the Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology (CHATBOT) Act on April 29. Rather than requiring age verification, Cruz's bill focuses on parental empowerment through mandatory family accounts for children under 13 and optional accounts for teens. This framework grants parents control over privacy settings, time limits, and conversation records while prohibiting the use of minors' data for targeted advertising.

Both bills face opposition from the industry group NetChoice, which argues that the measures violate First Amendment rights and create security risks by requiring sensitive identification. Additionally, House ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. warned that the parental control mechanisms in the CHATBOT Act could endanger children in abusive households by granting parents complete access to their teens' online activities.