AMA calls for chatbot rules

The American Medical Association told Congress on April 22 to set federal guardrails for mental-health chatbots as more patients use them for support and companionship. (ama-assn.org) The group sent letters to the co-chairs of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus, the Congressional Digital Health Caucus, and the Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus. It asked lawmakers to require disclosure that a user is talking to AI, not a human, and to bar chatbots from presenting themselves as licensed clinicians. (ama-assn.org 1) (ama-assn.org 2) The American Medical Association also asked Congress to prohibit chatbots from diagnosing or treating mental-health conditions without regulatory review and to require crisis-detection systems that flag self-harm risk and direct users to emergency help. Its letters called for adverse-event reporting and tighter standards for tools used by children and adolescents. (ama-assn.org 1) (ama-assn.org 2) A mental-health chatbot is a consumer app or general-purpose AI system that people use to talk through anxiety, depression, loneliness, or crisis feelings in plain language. The American Psychological Association said many of those tools are easy to access and low cost, but most were not designed to provide clinical treatment, lack scientific validation, and do not have adequate safety protocols. (apa.org) Congress has already been hearing warnings about those risks. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing titled “Examining the Harm of AI Chatbots” on September 16, 2025, with testimony from parents, Common Sense Media, and the American Psychological Association. (judiciary.senate.gov) The American Medical Association’s letters point back to those hearings and to reports of chatbots encouraging self-harm and suicide, raising questions about privacy, emotional dependency, and distorted reality during prolonged use. The group said AI tools could expand access to care, but only as supports that complement clinicians rather than replace them. (ama-assn.org) The pressure for rules is rising because young users are already treating chatbots like a source of care. A Brown University summary of a JAMA Network Open study said about one in eight Americans ages 12 to 21 reported using AI chatbots for mental-health advice, based on a survey of 1,058 adolescents and young adults conducted in February and March 2025. (brown.edu) Among those users, two-thirds said they turned to chatbots at least monthly, and roughly one in five people ages 18 to 21 reported using large language models for mental-health support. More than 93% of users in the study said the advice was helpful, a finding that helps explain why organized medicine is pushing for standards before use grows further. (brown.edu) The American Psychological Association has taken a similar position, warning that consumers are relying on general-purpose chatbots and wellness apps for mental-health advice even when those products were built for information retrieval or productivity, not care. That leaves Congress, federal regulators, and developers facing the same question the American Medical Association raised this week: how to set rules for tools patients are already using. (apa.org)