WATCH: At Senate Aging Hearing, Kelly Highlights Legislation He Introduced to Protect Seniors from AI Fraud

This week, Arizona Senator and Senate Special Committee on Aging member Mark Kelly delivered remarks at a hearing on artificial intelligence-enabled fraud targeting older Americans. In this hearing that Kelly requested last year, he highlighted his recent legislation to protect seniors from AI-powered scams and deceptive chatbot practices.

Before the hearing, Kelly sent a letter along with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to leading AI companies-including OpenAI, Meta, and X-demanding answers on how they are making their products safe for older adults. In June, Kelly introduced the bipartisan Aging with AI Act, which would research how AI tools impact older Americans. The legislation was followed up by the introduction of Kelly's bipartisan Senior Chatbot Protection Act, a bill that would keep older Americans safe by requiring AI chatbot and voice assistant companies to provide clear disclosures, safeguard sensitive conversations, and end deceptive design practices in their products.

Kelly opened by laying out his vision for making AI work for all Americans: "Over the past year, I've been thinking a lot about how we make AI work for all Americans, not just a few big companies. And that's what led me last year to put out a roadmap called AI for America. And the ideas behind the roadmap are pretty simple, and that is, if AI is going to transform our economy, we need to have a real plan to make sure Americans aren't left behind and that the technology is developed and used responsibly."

Kelly warned that AI is making scams more convincing and more dangerous: "About 1 in 5 Arizonans in my state are over the age of 65, and when I hear from seniors in my state, they tell me they're concerned about what is real and what isn't real… Seniors are seeing more convincing phishing scams and AI generated scams and other forms of online fraud, and sometimes people don't know if they're talking to a bot or a real person."

Kelly highlighted his recently introduced Senior Chatbot Protection Act: "This bill requires companies to clearly disclose when consumers are interacting with AI and safeguard sensitive conversations and address deceptive design practices in their products that put people at risk. We want to help people make informed decisions while supporting, not replacing, human judgment and trusted relationships."

Ben Winters, Director of AI and Privacy at the Consumer Federation of America and one of the witnesses at the hearing, said Kelly's Senior Chatbot Protection Act would be "absolutely a positive step forward in making sure those tech companies are pulling their weight."

Sen. Kelly delivers remarks at Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing.

Click here to download a video of Kelly's opening remarks and questions. See the transcript below:

Senator Kelly:

As I think all of us know, AI has a very real potential of changing everything about our lives. It's changing how we work, how we make decisions, how entire industries are operating, reshaping our economy, energy systems, national security. It's affecting people's daily lives. And while it brings enormous opportunity, also introduces risk that demands some serious oversight. And that's why we're here today.

Over the past year, I've been thinking a lot about how we make AI work for all Americans, not just a few big companies. And that's what led me last year to put out a roadmap called AI for America and the ideas behind the roadmap are pretty simple, and that is, if AI is going to transform our economy, we need to have a real plan to make sure Americans aren't left behind and that the technology is developed and used responsibly.

And here's the thing these systems are evolving very quickly-even just quickly in the last few weeks-and there's a lot that we don't know. And there's a lot that the developers themselves don't know about what some of these products are capable of. Older Americans need to be included in this conversation and not treated as just some afterthought, as these products are developed and deployed.

About 1 in 5 Arizonans in my state are over the age of 65, and when I hear from seniors in my state, they tell me they're concerned about what is real and what isn't real. Miss Del Mastro, you certainly have experienced that and I'm so sorry for what happened to you and your family. Seniors are seeing more convincing phishing scams and AI generated scams and other forms of online fraud, and sometimes people don't know if they're talking to a bot or a real person.

Just yesterday, I was on the phone with my cable company. I called and I was convinced that this was an artificial person, and I still think it may have been. I may have been augmented by a real person and when I started questioning whether or not the person was real, it became the real person. So, I think there are systems where one person where you can have the AI overlaid and there's somebody monitoring. Anyway, we sorted it out. I got the real person eventually. So, these are real fair concerns, and it affects everybody. I share them, and I do spend my former career as somebody who used a lot of technology.

So, last week I introduced legislation with Senator Justice called the Senior Chatbot Protection Act. This bill will require companies to clearly disclose when consumers are interacting with AI and safeguard sensitive conversations and address deceptive design practices in their products that put people at risk. We want to help people make informed decisions while supporting, not replacing human judgment and trusted relationships.

So, today, Ranking Member Gillibrand and I are asking the leading AI companies directly, how are you making sure your products are safe for older adults, and are you designing products with them in mind and do you even know how many older adults are using your products? And if we want to make sure AI will help rather than harm, we need to know about, you know, who's using it, how they're using it, and how it reacts in the real world.

So, that's the purpose of my bipartisan Aging with AI Act, with which the chairman mentioned, which we introduced Chairman Scott and I in June. It will help us build the evidence we need by supporting research into how seniors use AI and its risks and benefits, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. AI companies have a responsibility to make their products safe, to be honest about their limitations and protect our constituents who use them and Congress as a responsibility to set clear rules, demand accountability from tech companies, and make decisions based on science, data and facts. We have an opportunity to get ahead of these problems. We often do not here in Congress, but we should, and we have to in this case, because the window is not going to stay open forever on this. We got to get this right now.

So, in my remaining time, which I have none-maybe the chairman could give me another 45 seconds. Mr. Winters, based on the harms you've seen and talked about during your testimony, how would the protections in the Senior Chatbot Protection Act make AI chatbots and voice assistants safer for older Americans? And is it important for Congress to do this?

Ben Winters:

Yeah. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I think that some of the provisions in that bill are extraordinarily useful, right? As you mentioned, it's nonsense to not be able to feel confident that, you know, that you're actually talking to a person or not, right? So, that feels like an absolute baseline thing we can do, and we can also sort of integrate significant restrictions on the way the chatbots are actually sort of looking to the user, right? To make it more obvious that it is a chat bot, to make it clear what the choices from those companies are. I think one thing not to take up too much time that I want to underline is that the chatbot products, especially are products. They're tech. Companies have choices about what gets spit out by those chatbots, how they are built, and sort of how you interact with them. So, I think that there are a number of pieces of legislation, including the Senior Chatbot Protection Act, that would be absolutely a positive step forward and making sure those tech companies are pulling their weight and helping there.

Sen Kelly:

Thank you.