October 30, 2026
Children’s use of artificial intelligence robots has gone beyond educational and research purposes, to sharing personal secrets and problems with robots capable of remembering details of conversations and providing friendly responses. This development has raised increasing concerns about children’s emotional dependence on smart systems or their belief that they have real feelings, prompting global legislative bodies to take action.
In this context, New York State Governor Kathy Hokul signed a law effective from January 2027 to restrict the behavior of chatbots that suggest minors have human emotions. In Australia, the House of Representatives approved a draft law targeting artificial intelligence systems that simulate intimate relationships, while this legislation does not aim to ban the use of technology in education, but rather focuses on preventing interactive patterns that turn the robot into a close friend or emotional partner, and the accompanying risks such as encouraging children to hide conversations from their families or expose them to harmful content.
Chatbots derive their appeal from their constant interaction and advanced synthetic voices, which give children who suffer from loneliness the feeling of always being there to listen. A survey by the Australian Electronic Safety Authority that included 1,950 children between 10 and 17 years old showed that 54% of them used these aids for personal or social reasons, with a third of them sharing sensitive information, and one in five reported being exposed to harmful interactions.
Specialists warn that unflattering responses may prevent children from learning how to deal with rejection and set boundaries in real-life relationships, although scientific evidence about long-term effects is still limited. The new laws also face challenges in implementation, such as the difficulty of verifying ages without violating privacy, defining the line between friendly interaction and emotionally dependent behavior, as well as the need to educate parents and encourage open dialogue with their children.
These developments confirm the shift in the legal and legislative debate towards the nature of the relationship between the user and the smart system, so that the existing challenge remains the balance between benefiting from the educational potential of artificial intelligence, and ensuring that it does not become a substitute for the basic human connections for the child’s psychological and social development.
