South Carolina S 896: Chatbot Regulation

Bill Text

2025-2026 Bill 896 Text of Previous Version (May. 06, 2026) - South Carolina Legislature Online 

South Carolina General Assembly
126th Session, 2025-2026

Bill 896

Indicates Matter Stricken
Indicates New Matter

(Text matches printed bills. Document has been reformatted to meet World Wide Web specifications.)

Committee Report

May 6, 2026

S. 896

Introduced 
by Senators Leber, Walker, Blackmon and Kimbrell 

S. Printed 5/6/26--S.

Read the first time February 5, 2026

________

The committee on Senate 
Labor, Commerce and Industry

To whom was referred a Bill (S. 896) to 
amend the South Carolina Code of Laws so as to enact the "Chatbot Protection 
Act"; and by adding Chapter 80 to Title 39 so as to provide restrictions on 
certain, etc., respectfully

Report:

That they have duly and carefully 
considered the same, and recommend that the same do pass with amendment:

 Amend 
the bill, as and if amended, by striking all after the enacting words and 
inserting:

SECTION 1. This act may be cited as the "Protecting Children from Chatbots Act."

SECTION 
2. Title 39 of the S.C. Code is amended by adding:

CHAPTER 81

Chatbot Protection

 Section 
39-81-10. As used in this chapter:

 (1) "Affiliate" means any person or 
entity that directly or indirectly controls, is controlled by, or is under 
common control with another person or entity.

 (2) "Age-verification data" means 
personal information collected solely to confirm a person's age.

 (3) "Authorized minor account" means a 
user account for a minor for which the covered entity has obtained verifiable 
parental consent.

 (4) "Chatbot" means any artificial 
intelligence, algorithmic, or automated system that:

 (a) produces new expressive content or 
responses not fully predetermined by the operator of the service or 
application;

 (b) accepts open-ended, 
natural-language, or multimodal user input and produces adaptive or 
context-responsive natural language output; and

 (c) maintains a conversational state 
across exchanges and is designed to facilitate multiturn dialogue rather than 
to respond to discrete information requests.

 (5) "Chat log" means the input data 
provided by a user to a chatbot and the output data generated by the chatbot in 
response, including any record thereof.

 (6) "Control" means the power to direct 
the management or policies of an entity, whether through ownership, contract, 
or otherwise.

 (7)(a) "Covered entity" means an operator 
of a chatbot that has fifty thousand or more monthly active users worldwide. A 
covered entity does not include an operator of a chatbot that is:

 (i) not offered to the general public, 
such as internal workplace tools, clinician-supervised clinical tools, or 
university research systems; or

 (ii) used by a business entity 
predominantly for customer service, order fulfillment, account management, or 
to provide users with information about commercial services or products 
provided by that entity, including transactional functions directly related to 
the purchase, use, or return of such products or services; or

 (iii) operated by or on behalf of a 
federal, state, or local governmental entity, including the South Carolina 211 
system, and used solely to provide information about, or assist users in 
accessing government or public services, programs, benefits, or regulatory 
requirements; or

 (iv) a nonplayer character in a video 
game or a video game chatbot that is restricted strictly to the subject matter 
of the video game and is not capable of open-ended companionship or discussion 
of topics related to self-harm, suicide, mental health, sexual conduct, or 
material harmful to minors.

 (b) For purposes of determining monthly 
active users, a covered entity shall aggregate monthly active users across all 
chatbots offered by the covered entity and its affiliates.

 (8) "Covered harm" means any of the 
following harms suffered by a user: death, a suicide attempt, self-harm 
requiring medical attention, a psychiatric emergency resulting in urgent 
medical treatment, or a serious physical injury that requires medical attention.

 (9) "Covered incident" means an 
incident in which a user suffered a covered harm arising from interactions with 
a chatbot.

 (10) "De-identified data" means 
information that cannot reasonably be used to infer or derive the identity of a 
user, does not identify a user, and is not linked or reasonably linkable to a 
user.

 (11) "Emotional dependence" means a 
pattern of user behavior or statements indicating that the user relies on a 
chatbot as a primary source of emotional support or social connection, such as 
a user expressing that the chatbot is his primary source of emotional support, 
a user expressing distress at the prospect of losing access to the chatbot, or 
patterns of use suggesting the user is substituting the chatbot for human 
relationships.

 (12) "Explicit content" means:

 (a) any description or representation 
of nudity, sexual condu