State chatbot bills keep Google-sized exits in the draft

At least 10 states this year advanced chatbot-safety bills with near-identical carveouts, exemption lines that can pull ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, and Alexa out of the child-protection rules the bills advertise, NPR reports. Katie McQue’s exclusive finds heavy tech-industry input in the drafting, and some 2026 enactments already include language that can spare the most popular chatbots from the regulations sold as safety.

NPR’s review of legal records counts at least 75 lawsuits against AI developers over alleged chatbot harms, many involving children. Cases named in the reporting include Juliana Montoya and Character.AI, Adam Raine and ChatGPT, Sewell Setzer III and Character.AI, and Jonathan Gavalas and Gemini. There is still no federal chatbot statute.

Colorado’s House Bill 26-1263, the Chatbot Safety Act, excludes 12 categories of chatbots, including developer and researcher tools, commerce and customer-service bots, chatbots housed in search engines, business-productivity products, video games, voice assistants, and chatbots built into social media. A person familiar with the process says Healthier Colorado worked with Google on the bill. Sponsor Rep. Sean Camacho said he worked with Healthier Colorado and stakeholders including Google, that Governor Jared Polis asked him to make the bill look like other states’ chatbot bills, and Polis signed it in May 2026.

Advocates say those carveouts could let ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude argue a developer or researcher exemption, and could put Gemini under a search-engine exemption.

Hawaii Rep. Trish La Chica says Google lobbyists handed her a framework she understood was written by the company, and she refused to sponsor it. The measure later signed as Act 248 stripped the lobbyist exemptions. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed her state’s chatbot bill in June, writing that she will not protect big tech and AI chatbots more than children.

Identical or near-identical language exempting “a feature within another software application, web interface, or computer program” appears in bills in at least eight states, including Idaho, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Oklahoma. Analysts say that phrasing could cover Meta AI and Grok when they sit inside another app. Voice-assistant exemption language that would reach Alexa appears in five states, with modified versions in a further 10.

Google lobbyists registered in support of chatbot bills in Iowa, Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona, according to disclosure records. Many of the measures are modeled on California’s SB 243 from 2025, a draft advocates view as industry-friendly. Model-bill language is draft text lobbyists can hand to lawmakers in many capitals at once.

The same exit doors keep showing up in bills sold as child protection.