The Youth AI Privacy Act’s Privacy Paradox

The Senate Commerce Committee is poised to consider the Youth AI Privacy Act, a bill that would require AI companies to create kids-only privacy rules and implement so-called “safe design features”, which would – like three other bills under consideration this week—require more data collection and make it harder for people to access lawful speech online. 

While the bill is narrower than some other proposed chatbot bills, it still has massive data security implications, because it protects information for only certain users. This creates a problem we’ve cited many times before: if a bill requires that online services offer protections to minor users, the services will respond by imposing age gates to know which users should receive them. A better approach would be to offer the same privacy protections to all users. That way, we would avoid the services having to collect data on everyone to know a users’ age.

This bill also contains a problematic and vague provision that expressly allows AI companies to collect a known minor’s personal data for the purpose of testing, identifying, and addressing “harm to users”—without being clear on what exactly that means. Either way, services will need to collect even more information from young people, who are already targets of data theft and identity fraud. The Youth AI Privacy Act will give young people less privacy, not more. 

To be sure, the Youth AI Privacy Act does include some positive privacy provisions around prohibiting the processing of personal information, like limiting what companies can do with people’s chat logs, including training, profiling, and disclosing them to other companies for training. But a general privacy bill must set these limits for everyone, not just minors. 

Mandating Design is Regulating Speech

The bill also requires the use of “safe design features”, which would restrict how  online services providers design their systems and would deny teenagers the ability to use features like push alerts and notifications.  

We have seen this same type of restriction, sometimes called “age appropriate design code” in several states, including in California, Texas, and Arkansas. Unfortunately, these restrictions run into constitutional problems. In fact, federal courts have largely blocked these laws from going into effect because they likely violate the First Amendment rights of all internet users and the online services they regulate. Specifically, these laws interfere with internet users’ First Amendment rights to either speak or access speech online, and they also violate the rights on online services to decide how they will present information on their sites. 

Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that “minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection.” This does not mean that parents or guardians can’t set their own rules for their families – they can and they should, based on the needs and circumstances of the individual teenagers. But it does mean that Congress cannot adopt a “one size fits all” regulation that sets a restrictive government default that affects the First Amendment rights of all internet users, including teenagers.