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Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Mary Gay Scanlon are preparing legislation that would ban AI companies from selling Americans' health and location data to third-party brokers — including sensitive information users share with chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude.
The proposed legislation addresses a growing concern about how AI companies handle sensitive personal information users voluntarily share during conversations. When someone asks ChatGPT about symptoms, discusses mental health with Claude, or seeks medical advice from AI assistants, that information currently exists in a regulatory gray area.
Unlike traditional healthcare providers bound by HIPAA protections, AI companies operating general-purpose chatbots face no specific restrictions on selling health-related conversation data to third parties. This creates a potential pathway for deeply personal medical information to reach data brokers who compile and resell consumer profiles.
The legislation would close this loophole by explicitly prohibiting AI companies from monetizing health and location data revealed through user interactions, regardless of whether users intended to share medical information or simply mentioned it in passing.
Data brokers currently purchase and aggregate consumer information from numerous sources to build detailed profiles for advertising, insurance, and other commercial purposes. The AI chatbot ecosystem represents a new, largely unregulated source of intimate personal data that existing privacy laws weren't designed to address.
The Warren-Scanlon proposal would specifically target this gap by treating AI-revealed health and location data with the same protections as traditional medical records. This approach recognizes that users often share sensitive information with AI assistants in ways that mirror conversations with healthcare providers or therapists.
While the lawmakers haven't released full details of the enforcement mechanisms, the legislation would likely require AI companies to implement new data handling procedures and potentially restructure their business models around user data monetization.
For creators using AI tools, the legislation could influence how conversational AI platforms collect and use the personal information that inevitably surfaces during extended creative sessions or workflow discussions. The bill's success will depend on whether Congress views AI data privacy as urgent enough to overcome typical legislative gridlock around technology regulation.
