Press reports indicate that the Senate Commerce Committee is preparing to markup a package of kids’s safety and artificial intelligence legislation on July 29. For months, the White House has been in talks with Republican Senate leaders to strike a deal on kids’ safety and AI bills that would also preempt certain state AI legislation. Yesterday, Senators Cruz and Blackburn met with White House officials, including President Trump, to discuss the package.
Reports of the meeting provide little clarity or guidance regarding what may be included in the upcoming markup. However, given legislation currently pending before the Senate and hints in public reporting, the following bills could be on the markup list, each with serious First Amendment, freedom of expression, and privacy issues:
- Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Concerns raised by the Senate’s version of KOSA are well documented. The duty of care is likely unconstitutional. The bill incentivizes age verification, which endangers privacy and free expression for everyone. And kids in the LGBTQ community, disability community, and other marginalized groups will be disproportionately harmed by the censorship the bill would encourage.
- Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology Act of 2026 or “CHATBOT” Act. While a less restrictive option than the GUARD Act, which would raise far greater privacy and free expression concerns, the CHATBOT Act nonetheless raises constitutional concerns by incentivizing age verification to access generative AI systems without sufficient safeguards to protect privacy and the ability to access these systems free from undue burdens on constitutional rights. It would require minors under 13 to have parent-managed accounts and would make that choice optional for minors who are 13-17. Parent accounts would have the ability to monitor the contents of all minors’ communications with a chatbot, endangering kids’ privacy and free expression rights.
- The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act. The NO FAKES Act has been referred to the Judiciary Committee, but has been a part of the conversation around this package since its first reporting and may be included at some point in the process toward passage. It faces strong opposition because it would create a heckler’s veto over lawful expression and entrench the abuses of DMCA notice-and-takedown in vast new areas of speech. Protected satire, parody, commentary, and news would come down first, with speakers vindicated only if they fight back and, because platforms would face steep penalties for guessing wrong on contested constitutional questions, the predictable result would be over-removal and self-censorship. The bill also threatens the very people it hopes to protect, allowing the new likeness right to be licensed and enforced by parties other than the depicted individual and leaving ordinary people and performers with someone else in control of their own face and voice.
- App Store Accountability Act. The App Store Accountability Act would require app stores to verify the age categories of their users, using commercially available methods. It would then require parental consent for minors to download any app and parental consent for any significant changes app developers made to their terms of services. Because the App Store Accountability Act requires age assurance for everyone to access constitutionally protected speech, it is likely to face significant constitutional challenges. It further insufficiently protects the privacy of users who will now need to provide additional data to verify their age categories to app stores. It is possible that the Parents Over Platforms Act will be included instead of the App Store Accountability Act. While that bill is preferable to the App Store Accountability Act, it still needs work to ensure it protects privacy and would withstand constitutional challenge.
- Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA 2.0. COPPA 2.0 has already passed the Senate but may be included in order to ensure that the bill is part of the package that goes to the floor. COPPA 2.0 would meaningfully enhance privacy protections for minors in many ways, but also may incentivize age verification.
In addition to these privacy, free expression, and constitutional concerns, none of the above bills or any other bill likely to be considered by the Committee would sufficiently restrict AI systems’ use of everyone’s data, let alone children’s data, to ensure our privacy is protected or protect against discrimination in the use of AI in housing, employment, credit, education, or healthcare contexts.
For those reasons, this package does not justify preemption of state AI protections. This is even more true in light of the House of Representatives’ decision not to preempt any state laws that do not conflict with the provisions of its kids safety package.
Protecting kids — including protecting their free expression and privacy rights when they’re using digital technologies — should be a priority as we design our digital future, and there are smart, rights respecting ways to mitigate harms while respecting the Constitution and our rights. Moreover, any provision that includes mandated age verification must also mitigate its risks by including privacy-protective guardrails.
How the United States chooses to regulate AI is one of the most critical questions of our time. States are at the forefront of the legislative and policy conversation. Congress should not stifle their work in favor of incomplete and constitutionally problematic legislative packages that create a patchwork of protections at best and erode our privacy and free expression rights at worst.
Facts Only
* The Senate Commerce Committee is preparing to mark up a package of kids’ safety and artificial intelligence legislation on July 29.
* The White House engaged in talks with Republican Senate leaders to strike a deal on kids’ safety and AI bills that would preempt certain state AI legislation.
* Senators Cruz and Blackburn met with White House officials, including President Trump, to discuss the package.
* Potential bills for markup include: Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology Act of 2026 (“CHATBOT” Act), Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, App Store Accountability Act, and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0).
* Concerns regarding KOSA include potential unconstitutionality of the duty of care, incentives for age verification that endanger privacy and free expression, and disproportionate harm to marginalized groups.
* The CHATBOT Act raises constitutional concerns by incentivizing age verification for generative AI access without sufficient privacy safeguards; it proposes parent-managed accounts that could compromise minors' communications data.
* The NO FAKES Act faces opposition as it could create a heckler’s veto over lawful expression and expand DMCA notice-and-takedown abuses, threatening protected satire and parody.
* The App Store Accountability Act requires app stores to verify user ages using commercial methods and require parental consent for downloads and changes to terms of service, raising constitutional challenges and privacy concerns regarding data.
* COPPA 2.0 may be included, potentially incentivizing age verification while enhancing privacy protections.
Executive Summary
The Senate Commerce Committee is preparing to mark up a package of kids’ safety and artificial intelligence legislation on July 29. Discussions have occurred between the White House and Republican Senate leaders regarding a deal that would preempt certain state AI legislation. Several bills are reportedly on the markup list, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology Act of 2026 ("CHATBOT" Act), the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, the App Store Accountability Act, and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0).
The concerns surrounding these potential bills center on First Amendment rights, freedom of expression, and privacy issues related to AI regulation. Specific concerns include KOSA potentially invalidating the duty of care, incentivizing age verification that threatens privacy for marginalized groups, and the CHATBOT Act's incentive for age verification without sufficient safeguards against privacy violations in parent-managed accounts. The NO FAKES Act is noted for threatening expression by creating a mechanism for removing protected speech and introducing new likeness rights. The App Store Accountability Act raises constitutional challenges regarding age assurance and user privacy data collection, while COPPA 2.0 may incentivize age verification. The author concludes that the proposed package does not justify preempting state AI protections and suggests that mandated age verification must include privacy-protective guardrails.
Full Take
The narrative constructs a tension between state-level regulation flexibility and a centralized, preemptive federal approach to AI governance, framing the inevitable outcome as an erosion of fundamental constitutional rights. The core implication is that legislative packages designed for safety often introduce mechanisms (like age verification) whose actual effect is to expand surveillance and stifle expression, particularly for vulnerable populations.
The pattern suggests a resistance against regulatory frameworks that impose broad, mandatory controls over digital communication channels, regardless of the context or degree of necessity. The framing surrounding bills like NO FAKES—which targets content moderation via threat mechanisms—and the App Store Accountability Act—which focuses on user identity verification tied to commercial access—echoes historical friction points where state autonomy meets centralized digital control.
The argument pivots from specific legislative mechanics to a higher principle: that any solution imposing mandated age verification must simultaneously incorporate robust privacy-protective guardrails, suggesting that technological regulation must be balanced against constitutional imperatives rather than treated as an optional add-on. The assertion that states are at the forefront of policy creation is immediately countered by the need for federal structure; this sets up a conflict between distributed rights and centralized enforcement.
The analysis invites further inquiry into where legitimate safety concerns intersect with the necessity of explicit privacy protections in digital contexts, especially when considering how mandated data collection impacts marginalized groups. What mechanisms exist to ensure that necessary safety measures do not function as instruments of disproportionate censorship or surveillance? What alternative models for regulating AI can achieve safety objectives without relying on systemic age-gating that inherently creates new vectors for harm?
Sentinel — Human
The text functions as an argument critiquing proposed federal legislation regarding AI safety, grounding its critique in established constitutional and privacy principles while presenting multiple legislative scenarios.