SB 796 — Artificial Intelligence Companion Chatbots and Minors Act; established, enforcement, civil penalty.
VA 20261 session
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots and Minors Act established; enforcement; civil penalties; individual action. Creates the Artificial Intelligence Chatbots and Minors Act to require a covered entity, defined in the bill, to (i) implement certain reasonable systems and processes, (ii) make reasonable efforts to notify appropriate emergency services or law enforcement if it obtains knowledge that a user faces an imminent risk of death or serious physical injury, and (iii) submit a report to the Attorney General after obtaining knowledge of certain covered incidents, defined in the bill, connected to one or more of its chatbots. The bill also requires an operator, defined in the bill, to disclose the non-human nature of the chatbot to users at certain intervals. The bill authorizes the Attorney General to initiate an action to seek an injunction and civil penalties for violations and also provides an individual civil action for any person harmed by a violation or the parent or legal guardian of a minor harmed by a violation.
Latest action: — Continued
Sponsors (4)
- Tara A. Durant (R, VA) — sponsor
- Adam P. Ebbin (D, VA) — cosponsor
- Christopher T. Head (R, VA) — cosponsor
- Schuyler T. VanValkenburg (D, VA) — cosponsor
Action timeline (36)
- · senate · S4022 —
- · senate · S1201 —
- · senate · S8500 —
- · senate · S8122 —
- · senate · S1208 —
- · senate · S4640 —
- · senate · S4150 —
- · senate · S4140 —
- · senate · S4160 —
- · senate · S4140 —
- · senate · S4160 —
- · senate · S4160 —
- · senate · S4120 —
- · senate · S4410 —
- · senate · S8123 —
- · senate · S4200 —
- · senate · S4400 —
- · senate · S4420 —
- · senate · S4600 —
- · senate · S4603 —
- · senate · S4400 —
- · senate · S4190 —
- · senate · S8123 —
- · senate · S4200 —
- · senate · S4230 —
- · senate · S4604 —
- · senate · S4150 —
- · senate · S4148 —
- · senate · S4600 —
- · senate · S5000 —
- · senate · S4148 —
- · house · H5220 —
- · house · H4110 —
- · house · H2101 —
- · house · H8122 —
- · house · H2140 —
Text versions (0)
No text versions on file yet — same ingest as the action timeline populates these. Each version has direct links to the XML / HTML / PDF at govinfo.gov.
Bill text (extracted)
Amendments
Congressional Research Service briefs (0)
CRS reports that cite this bill in their relatedMaterials — what Congress was reading on the topic. Click any report for its summary, formats, and bill-citation walk.
No CRS reports cite this bill yet.
Connected on the graph
1 typed relationship in the influence graph — 0 inbound, 1 outbound, grouped by type.
referred to committee (1)
| date | dir | entity | amount | role | source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | → | Communications, Technology and Innovation | — | va-leg |
Who matters on this bill
Who matters
Members ranked by combined influence on this bill: role (sponsor 5 / cosponsor 1), capped speech count from the Congressional Record, and recorded-vote engagement.
| # | Member | Role | Speeches | Voted | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tara A. Durant (R, state_upper VA) | sponsor | 0 | — | 5 |
| 2 | Adam P. Ebbin (D, state_upper VA) | cosponsor | 0 | — | 1 |
| 3 | Christopher T. Head (R, state_upper VA) | cosponsor | 0 | — | 1 |
| 4 | Schuyler T. VanValkenburg (D, state_upper VA) | cosponsor | 0 | — | 1 |
Stance (positions taken)
Predicted vote
Aggregated from: actual roll-call votes (when present) → sponsor → cosponsor → party median (predicts YES when ≥25% of the caucus sponsored/cosponsored). Each row labels its confidence tier so you can see why a position was predicted.
0 predicted yes (0%) · 543 predicted no (100%) · 0 unknown (0%)
By party: · R: 0 yes / 277 no · D: 0 yes / 263 no · I: 0 yes / 3 no
Timeline
Every typed-graph event involving this entity, newest first. Each row is one edge in the influence graph; the inline strip under the row shows the counterpart's own context (a bill's latest action, a hearing's chamber + date, a filing's form type + filed date, a clip's source + excerpt) so the timeline reads like a Wikipedia citation rail.
- 2026-05-24 · was referred to Communications, Technology and Innovation · va-leg