Warren Health Data Bill Adds AI Chatbots To Broker Ban
A revised Health and Location Data Protection Act would bar the sale of Americans’ health and location information to data brokers, including information shared with AI chatbots. The Verge reported that the bill would give the FTC 180 days to write rules and earmark $1 billion over 10 years for enforcement.
Warren And Scanlon Plan AI-Era Health Data Bill
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Mary Gay Scanlon are preparing a revised Health and Location Data Protection Act that would cover health or location details people disclose to AI chatbots.
The proposal would ban the sale of Americans’ health and location information to data brokers.
The planned update expands the earlier bill’s focus to include information shared with services such as ChatGPT or Claude.
Chatbot Medical Uploads Add A Privacy Gap
The proposal arrives as AI companies test health and medical uses for chatbots.
Elon Musk asked users in January to upload medical records, including MRI scans, to Grok.
OpenAI also introduced ChatGPT Health in January as a sandboxed tab inside ChatGPT and encouraged users to upload medical records.
Sara Gerke, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign law professor, said in January that protections for tools from OpenAI and Anthropic largely depend on company privacy policies and terms of use.
The United States still lacks an overall federal consumer privacy framework.
FTC Would Get 180 Days To Write Rules
The bill is also sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden and Bernie Sanders.
The Verge reported that the bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to enact rules within 180 days and would allow the FTC, state attorneys general and affected individuals to sue to enforce them.
The Verge reported that the proposal would earmark $1 billion for the FTC over the next 10 years for enforcement.
Warren said the measure is aimed at data brokers that profit from selling sensitive information, especially as more people enter private health data into AI systems.
Earlier Bill Dates Back To June 2022
The Verge reported that the earlier version of the Health and Location Data Protection Act was first introduced in June 2022.
It prohibited data brokers from collecting and selling location and health data, before the current wave of consumer AI health tools became part of the privacy debate.
The revised bill has not yet been introduced.
Warren and Scanlon are planning to debut it in the coming weeks, but the lawmakers have not disclosed final bill text, a committee schedule or a vote date.
