The CHATBOT Act is a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill introduced on April 29, 2026 that would let parents control how children interact with AI chatbots and disable manipulative features. It was offered by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Brian Schatz (D-HI), John Curtis (R-UT), and Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Status and timeline
The bill was introduced April 29, 2026 in the U.S. Senate as the CHATBOT Act. Curtis was added as a co-sponsor on April 29, 2026 per IAPP, expanding an original Cruz–Schatz–Schiff trio to a four-way bipartisan group.
Per Transformer News reporting (May 1, 2026), the bill carries broad liability carve-outs and is widely viewed by Senate aides as a messaging vehicle rather than as likely to receive floor time (Source: transformernews.ai). The same reporting notes the CHATBOT Act may be displaced in floor priority by the Hawley GUARD Act, which the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced unanimously on April 30, 2026, a further procedural step than CHATBOT's introduction-level posture.
Sponsors
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — lead sponsor; Senate Commerce Committee.
- Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) — co-sponsor.
- Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) — co-sponsor (added April 29, 2026 per IAPP).
- Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — co-sponsor.
Cruz and Curtis sit on the Republican side of the sponsorship; Schatz and Schiff on the Democratic side. The expanded grouping reflects bipartisan Senate interest in the framing of AI chatbots and minors.
Key provisions
The bill would let parents control how children interact with AI chatbots and disable manipulative features, requiring providers to offer family accounts with parental controls over memory and engagement features. The memory provision targets the feature implicated in Raine v. OpenAI, Garcia v. Character.AI, and the Hawley investigation into Meta's GenAI: Content Risk Standards, where persistent contextual memory is described as enabling longitudinal manipulation that single-session controls do not address.
Relation to other legislation
The CHATBOT Act is a federal child-safety AI bill with bipartisan sponsorship; the Take It Down Act and NO FAKES Act are deepfake-specific rather than chatbot-specific. At the state level, CA SB 243 (companion-chatbot disclosure) and parallel state efforts have moved ahead of federal activity; the CHATBOT Act is a federal counterpart that could either preempt or supplement state regulation. In the House, a same-day Lieu-Obernolte 195-page consolidation addressed AI legislation in parallel.
Relationships
- related: Raine v. OpenAI, Inc., Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc., California SB 243 — Companion Chatbots, Sen. Hawley Letter to Meta re AI Chatbots (2025-08-15), Lieu-Obernolte AI Bill (April 2026), AI Mental Health and Psychological Harm, (planned) ai-and-children concept.
- depends-on: TAKE IT DOWN Act — Source Summary (precedent for federal AI/child-safety legislation).
Sources
- Inside AI Policy / Cruz offers bipartisan bill requiring parental controls for minors' use of AI chatbots (April 29, 2026): insideaipolicy.com
- IAPP / CHATBOT Act introduced by Cruz, Schatz, Curtis, Schiff (April 29, 2026): iapp.org