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Missouri committee hears bill to bar AI chatbots from posing as mental-health professionals
Summary
Representative Tara Peters presented HB 2,368 to prohibit AI chatbots from advertising or representing themselves as licensed mental-health professionals; clinicians and provider groups testified that chatbots can reinforce harmful behavior and provide misleading or inaccurate information, and committee members questioned definitions and enforcement limits.
Representative Tara Peters presented House Bill 2,368 and told the House Health and Mental Health Committee the bill is a truth-in-advertising measure aimed at protecting Missourians seeking mental-health services.
"This bill would prohibit AI chat bots from representing that they are in fact mental health professionals or that they can provide therapy services or make mental health diagnoses," Representative Tara Peters said, introducing the measure and noting roughly "1 in 8 adolescents and young adults in the United States" have used AI chatbots for mental-health purposes, citing a 2025 JAMA study.
Clinical witnesses and provider groups spoke in support. "These chatbots are not inherently bad, but they are not trained professionals," Dr. Amy Beck, a clinical health psychologist who testified on behalf of the Missouri Psychological Association, told the committee. She described personal experience with a wearable device whose embedded chatbot repeatedly validated harmful behaviors and sometimes offered confident but inaccurate information.
Dr. Beck and other witnesses said three recurring concerns motivated the bill: chatbots are designed to perpetuate engagement, they tend to validate users even when reinforcement is harmful, and they can present inaccurate or misleading clinical statements that lay users cannot reliably distinguish from professional guidance.
Garrett Webb, representing the Missouri chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Missouri Psychological Association, told the committee that cases involving adolescents and AI have in some instances had fatal outcomes and that lawsuits are pending in other jurisdictions. He and other witnesses said the bill would not ban AI use in health care or adaptive triage tools but would prohibit advertising that presents AI as equivalent to licensed therapy.
Committee members asked how the bill would define "artificial intelligence," whether the state could enforce advertising by out-of-state services, and what remedies would apply. Peters and witnesses said the bill focuses on advertising and that enforcement would proceed through the attorney general's authority to seek damages; they acknowledged limits on cross-jurisdictional enforcement and said the statute is intended as a consumer-protection step rather than a global restriction on AI research or use.
"If you are misrepresenting yourself untruthfully, the consequences lie with the attorney general's office," Peters said.
Several lawmakers stressed concern for children and young people, and witnesses agreed that younger users are especially vulnerable to persuasive or reinforcing chatbot behavior. Witnesses added that the bill's language could be broadened to ensure all types of social workers and related professionals are covered by the definition of mental-health professional if the committee chooses.
The committee closed the hearing on HB 2,368 after receiving testimony from multiple provider groups and advocates and moved on to other bills on the agenda.
