Missouri House Bill 2032 could restrict anonymous speech online

A version of the following public comment was submitted to the members of the Missouri House Committee on Emerging Issues on March 22, 2026.

We share the sponsor's goal of protecting minors from harmful interactions with AI chatbots. However, House Bill 2032's approach risks burdening lawful adult speech, creating new privacy risks, and overriding parental authority without meaningfully improving child safety. Several states have already enacted targeted, proportionate measures addressing each of these concerns.

HB 2032 requires every user to submit ID-based age verification to use the platform, and mandates that operators freeze all unverified accounts. These conditions require access to lawful speech on government-approved identity checks. It forces adults to give up anonymity just to use a general-purpose technology tool, where sensitive conversations can be had.

The more common approach among states considering AI chatbot safety laws, and the one consistent with federal frameworks like the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"), is to trigger minor-specific protections only when an operator knows a user is a minor and to rely on parental involvement or age self-declaration rather than government ID verification. Missouri should follow this approach rather than impose universal identity checks on all users.

Government IDs are high-value targets for breaches and cybercrime. By requiring ID-based verification for all users, HB 2032 forces companies to create large repositories of sensitive public data. While third-party verification vendors are permitted, these services are sometimes the cause of data breaches, some of which have exposed over a billion pieces of identifying information. No state has yet taken the straightforward step of prohibiting operators from collecting, verifying, or inferring a user's age or identity beyond voluntarily provided information. This would be an improvement over existing approaches, and we urge the committee to consider it.

HB 2032 prohibits all minors from accessing AI companion chatbots, regardless of safety features or a parent's informed judgment. This removes a parent's ability to make decisions about their child's technology use and ignores that many of these tools offer legitimate educational and developmental value when used with appropriate safeguards.

Rather than an outright ban, we suggest that Missouri adopt an approach similar to Arizona's House Bill 2311, which establishes safety protocols for minors without entirely blocking minors from the technology. These protocols include requiring operators to disclose to minors that they are interacting with AI, prohibiting sexually explicit content and simulated emotional dependence, banning engagement-boosting reward systems, and mandating crisis intervention protocols.