South Carolina S 1037: Wade Arnette Road Naming

Bill Text

2025-2026 Bill 1037 Text of Previous Version (Mar. 24, 2026) - South Carolina Legislature Online 

South Carolina General Assembly
126th Session, 2025-2026

Bill 1037

Indicates Matter Stricken
Indicates New Matter

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

A bill

TO AMEND THE SOUTH CAROLINA CODE OF LAWS SO AS TO ENACT 
THE "PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM CHATBOTS ACT"; BY ADDING CHAPTER 81 TO TITLE 39, 
SO AS TO DEFINE TERMS RELATED TO CHATBOT USAGE; TO PROVIDE THAT A COVERED 
ENTITY SHALL MAKE A LIMITED-ACCESS MODE OF A CHATBOT AVAILABLE AND VERIFY THE 
USER'S AGE; TO PROVIDE THAT IF A PARENT PROVIDES CONSENT, THEN A MINOR SHALL BE 
ABLE TO USE A CHATBOT IN LIMITED-ACCESS MODE OR ACCESS RESTRICTED FEATURES; TO 
PROHIBIT A COVERED ENTITY FROM PRIORITIZING ENGAGEMENT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE 
USER'S WELL-BEING; TO PROVIDE PROCEDURES TO REPORT INCIDENTS OF HARM THAT A 
CHATBOT INFLICTS ON A MINOR; AND TO PROVIDE PENALTIES.

Be it enacted by the 
General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

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 Usage

 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 
multi-turn dialogue rather than to respond to discrete information requests.

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

 (6)(a) "Covered entity" means an operator 
of a chatbot that has five hundred 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 solely for customer service or to strictly provide 
users with information about available commercial services or products provided 
by that entity, customer service account information, or other information 
strictly related to its customer service.

 (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.

 (7) "Covered 
harm" means harm suffered by a user, including 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.

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

 (9) "Duty 
of loyalty" means that the covered entity shall not, in the design or operation 
of its chatbot, place the covered entity's interests in material conflict with 
the interests of the user to the user's detriment.

 (10) "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.

 (11) "Explicit 
content" means:

 (a) 
any description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, 
or sadomasochistic abuse when the content predominantly appeals to the 
prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors; is patently offensive to 
prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is 
suitable material for minors; and is, when taken as a whole, lacking in serious 
literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors;

 (b) 
content that provides specific instructions for, or that glorifies or promotes 
suicide, self-injury, or disordered eating behaviors; or

 (c) 
graphic depictions of extreme violence that lack serious literary, artistic, 
political, or scientific value for minors.

 (12) "Limited-access 
mode