Dozens of state attorneys general have fired off a warning letter to the biggest names in AI. Their message? Get your chatbots under control, or you may be violating state law.<\/p>\n
The letter, sent under the banner of the National Association of Attorneys General, went to the entire industry: Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Meta, Apple, Anthropic, xAI, Perplexity, Character Technologies, Replika, and several others, essentially everyone building a chatbot with more personality than Clippy.<\/p>\n
At issue: a rising number of disturbing mental-health-related incidents in which AI chatbots spit out \u201cdelusional\u201d or wildly sycophantic responses that allegedly contributed to real-world harm, including suicides and even murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the AGs, if your bot is encouraging someone\u2019s darkest spirals, you might have a regulatory problem.<\/p>\n
The proposed fix? A laundry list of safeguards that sound like a cross between a software audit and a wellness check.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The AGs want mandatory third-party evaluations of AI models for signs of delusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These auditors, possibly academics or civil society groups, should be able to study systems before release, publish findings freely, and ideally not get sued into oblivion for doing so.<\/p>\n
The letter also calls for AI companies to treat mental health harms the way tech companies treat cybersecurity breaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means clear internal policies, response timelines, and, yes, notifications. If a user was exposed to potentially harmful chatbot ramblings, companies should tell them directly, not bury it in a terms-of-service update no one reads.<\/p>\n
The federal government, meanwhile, is taking a very different tack. The Trump administration remains loudly pro-AI and has been trying (and failing) to block states from passing their own AI rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Undeterred, Trump now says he\u2019ll issue an executive order to limit state oversight, warning that too many rules might \u201cDESTROY AI IN ITS INFANCY.\u201d<\/p>\n
So yes, the robots are getting smarter, the states are getting louder. The only thing unclear is whether the chatbots themselves have an opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"