- Australia government has issued a bill to ban chatbots that create ’emotional intimacy’ with users
- The bill is also designed to reshape broader online standards to shield users from harmful content
- It arrives as the American Psychological Association reports that 49% of adults speak with AI as if it were a friend
The Australian government has issued a bill that will ban AI chatbots which seek to establish ‘emotional intimacy’ with its users, following a speech given by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on October 27.
The Digital Duty of Care bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives on October 28, could create new online safety measures applied across social media, games, apps, and chatbots ‘to provide a safe online environment for all Australians’, says the Labor party. The bill is set to be debated by the Senate in the coming weeks, with hopes it will be officially passed by the end of the year, The Guardian reports.
Not only is the framework designed to prevent AI chatbots from infiltrating young users’ emotional dependency, the bill will replace existing, broader online standards to shield users from harmful content. In 2025, Australia made history by becoming the first nation to ban social media for under-16s.
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According to Communications Minister, Anika Wells, content that encourages misogyny, terrorism, suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders will also be included. At the same time, the bill would also require social media platforms to have an easy-to-access ‘opt-out’ feature for suggested content fuelled by the algorithm.
Though the bill will be debated in the upper house before a final decision is made, it’s still unclear whether it will win the support of other parties. As it stands, the Greens continue to back Labor’s proposal while the Coalition and One Nation stand by their opposition to the bill, blaming Labor of forming ‘an ‘Orwellian’ system of censorship’.
Despite this backlash, Labor is determined to convince them otherwise, saying it’s still open to amendments. In his speech given on Tuesday, Albanese addressed the Coalition in an attempt to sway their vote saying ‘the stories we hear about people identifying a chatbot, a non-person as their best friend, should be a huge wake up call for every member of this parliament to be prepared to act’.
In addition to these challenges, Labor has fallen under increasing pressure to enlist the telecommunications ombudsman as a social media and AI watchdog (which doesn’t exist for big tech) after the party rejected an amendment during the lower house debate. This would allow social media users to file complaints if their accounts ever became hacked or inaccessible, and would also include compensation and will make room for investigating broader issues to name and shame tech giants.
Analysis: Chatbot dependency is only getting worse
The Labor party surely has a tough debate ahead, but despite the proposed bill’s criticisms the Australian government’s decision to tighten online safety measures hasn’t come from nowhere — and it’s not the first nation to clamp down on chatbots in this way.
Just a few months back, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and four other government departments introduced new regulations to ban AI-generated romantic companions, including virtual relationships with minors. The laws stated that these AI tools could no longer ‘excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships’.
Following the rollout of the legislation, companion chatbots from tech companies such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba were forced into evaluation before becoming publicly available again. If the government deemed these services unsafe, it shut them down.
With this in mind, both China and Australia’s recent actions reflect an alarming rise of user-chatbot dependency. According to a recent American Psychological Association (APA) survey reported by Medical Daily, Americans are turning to AI for emotional support as they struggle with financial pressure and remain uncertain about the future.
The results from the survey show that 49% of adults who use AI said they conversed with it as a friend, and 47% had used it as if it were a mental health professional including seeking a second opinion on a therapist’s suggestions or for therapeutic practices. Additionally, 77% of the survey’s 3,132 respondents identified that the rising cost of living is one of the biggest causes of stress, and 74% mentioned their concerns about the nation’s future.
That said, seeking the advice of an AI chatbot is something that Medical Daily seriously condemns. ‘AI systems can provide inaccurate information, miss important context, or respond inappropriately to someone in distress. Users may also share sensitive personal information without fully understanding how a particular service stores or uses their conversations,’ the outlet writes.
It also added the following: ‘People who use chatbots for emotional support should treat responses as general assistance, not a diagnosis or treatment plan. They should avoid relying on AI alone when symptoms persist, worsen, or interfere with daily life, and should discuss significant mental health concerns with a qualified health professional’.
By clamping down on regulations for chatbots, the Australian government has shown its awareness of the rising reliance on AI services, and it clearly wants to prevent this before the issue is irreversible. That said, Labor still faces the challenge of convincing opposers that this bill is the best practice for the nation.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
