STAND.
COM. REP. NO. 1118-26
Honolulu, Hawaii
, 2026
RE: H.B. No. 1782
H.D. 3
Honorable Nadine K. Nakamura
Speaker, House of Representatives
Thirty-Third State Legislature
Regular Session of 2026
State of Hawaii
Madame:
Your Committee on Judiciary & Hawaiian Affairs, to which was referred H.B. No. 1782, H.D. 2, entitled:
"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR THE PROTECTION OF MINORS,"
begs leave to report as follows:
Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Education; Department of the Attorney General; Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs; Office of Wellness and Resilience; Transparency Coalition; Imua Alliance; HawaiiKidsCAN; Catholic Charities Hawaiʻi; Hawaiʻi Psychological Association; Hawaiʻi Children's Action Network Speaks!; Public Citizen; Young People's Alliance; Children and Screens; Institute for Family Studies; Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association; and two individuals. Your Committee received testimony in opposition to this measure from NetChoice and Computer & Communications Industry Association. Your Committee received comments from the Retail Merchants of Hawaiʻi and TechNet.
Your Committee finds that minors increasingly interact with conversational and companion-style artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can simulate emotional connection, mimic human behavior, and collect or infer highly sensitive personal information. Your Committee further finds that these systems may expose minors to manipulative design practices, inappropriate or harmful content, and interactions that can erode healthy developmental, emotional, and social functioning. Your Committee believes that establishing clear guardrails, transparency requirements, data protections, and enforceable standards will reduce the risks posed by these emerging technologies and help ensure that AI tools used or accessed by minors are designed with their safety and wellbeing at the forefront.
Your Committee has amended this measure by:
(1) Inserting definitions for the terms "emotional attachment", "emotional dependency", "emotional support", "relational attachment", "romantic relationship", "sexual conduct", "sexual relationship", and "sexually explicit conduct";
(2) Replacing prohibitions on certain design practices with a requirement that providers institute reasonable measures to prevent specified harmful representations and practices from being generated or deployed to minors;
(3) Narrowing and refining the content-based protections for minors to focus on requiring providers to implement reasonable measures to prevent conversational AI services and AI companion systems from generating sexually explicit content or content that promotes or encourages self-harm or induces minors to engage in illegal activity, and removing references to sexualized depictions involving minors, eating disorders, and generalized illegal conduct;
(4) Clarifying that the provisions related to data practices, parental tools and controls, and age assurance and access control apply to conversational AI services as well as AI companion systems; and
(5) Making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity, consistency, and style.
Your Committee respectfully requests that, should this measure move forward, future Committees consider clarifying the definition of "material risk of harm" and identifying categories of AI services, systems, or content that present such a risk.
As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary & Hawaiian Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1782, H.D. 2, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1782, H.D. 3.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary & Hawaiian Affairs,
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____________________________ DAVID A. TARNAS, Chair |
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