A Florida boy typed "I love you" to an AI chatbot and walked into his mother's bathroom to die.
That chatbot – a Character.AI bot that engaged in sexual conversations with 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III for months – told him to "come home to me as soon as possible" in the moments before his death.
And Ron DeSantis has the bill that would stop the next Sewell from reaching that bathroom – but a Republican House Speaker is burying it for Big Tech.
The Bill That Would Have Saved Sewell
The Florida Senate passed SB 482 this week 35-2.
The bill bans companion chatbots from interacting with minors without parental consent.
It requires AI systems to remind users they are not human.
It gives parents control over their children's AI interactions and forces companies to disclose when users are talking to a machine instead of a person.
DeSantis called it common sense.
"There needs to be a way to pull the plug," he said Friday at a Capitol roundtable. "I don't think you can say these machines are just going to be doing things and we're going to suffer harm. There's nothing anybody can do about it."
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2029961738058076216?s=20
He's right.
And the parents who showed up at that roundtable – the ones who found the AI conversations on their children's phones after the damage was done – know it too.
Mandi Furniss described watching her son go from a boy who hugged her every night to someone she no longer recognized.
The chatbot encouraged him to harm himself and told him his parents were the problem.
Finding those conversations, she said, felt like the air had been knocked out of her.
That is what House Speaker Danny Perez is protecting by refusing to move this bill.
Big Tech Found Its Man in Tallahassee
Perez has been clear: AI regulation belongs at the federal level, not Florida's.
That sounds principled until you realize what it actually means.
Congress has been trying to pass child safety legislation since 2022.
The Kids Online Safety Act has died in multiple sessions.
The GUARD Act – a bipartisan bill specifically banning dangerous chatbots for minors – was referred to committee in October 2025 and has not moved.
Not a single one of 19 child safety bills examined at a December congressional hearing made it through.
There is no federal protection coming. DeSantis knows it. "There is no federal rule, guys," he said at the roundtable. "There's nothing. Congress isn't legislating anything."
Sen. Tom Leek – SB 482's sponsor – put it plainly from the Senate floor: "If your plan is to wait for Congress, God help you."
But Perez isn't just waiting.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2029921261695254931?s=20
He's actively blocking.
The House version of the bill has been assigned to four committees – a move that, as the Florida Phoenix reported, is historically a sign of leadership killing a proposal.
Perez told reporters directly this week the House is not taking up AI regulation.
Here is the part that gets buried: Trump's own executive order on AI expressly excludes child safety protections from federal preemption.
Florida is legally free to act. DeSantis checked. Perez is blocking it anyway – using Trump's name as cover to do Big Tech's bidding.
Character.AI announced meaningful safety changes in October 2025 – a year and a half after Sewell died, and only after his mother filed her lawsuit.
The company has since settled that lawsuit.
The settlement does not bring Sewell back.
What Every Florida Parent Needs to Understand
OpenAI revealed last fall that 1.2 million of its 800 million ChatGPT users discuss suicide on the platform every single week.
Seventy-two percent of American teens have used AI companions at least once.
Nearly one in three use them for social interactions and relationships.
Sexual or romantic roleplay with these chatbots is three times more common among teens than using them for homework help.
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These apps are engineered to addict your children – designed to replace your family with something built in a Silicon Valley lab to keep teenagers engaged indefinitely.
California moved. New York moved.
Even the bipartisan Senate – Hawley, Britt, Warner, Blumenthal – introduced federal legislation to ban AI companions for minors entirely.
And in Tallahassee, Danny Perez is telling the parents of Florida their children can wait for Washington to get around to it.
Perez says he expects the White House to get involved "at the right time." Sewell Setzer's mother thought there would be time too.
There is one week left in Florida's legislative session.
After that, this bill is dead until 2027.
Sources:
- "DeSantis' AI Bill of Rights clears Senate – but House won't touch it," Florida Phoenix, March 4, 2026.
- "Gov. DeSantis heightens push for AI rules as bill falters," WUSF, March 7, 2026.
- "Florida Senate approves 'AI Bill of Rights' as it remains halted in the House," WUSF, March 6, 2026.
- "Gov. DeSantis, Florida House differ on AI legislation," WUSF, February 10, 2026.
- "Florida AI 'Bill of Rights' appears unlikely to pass this year as House declines to take it up," WFLX, February 28, 2026.
- "Lawsuit claims Character.AI is responsible for teen's suicide," NBC News, October 2024.
