On Monday, September 28, 2026, the first voting day in roughly two and a half months, both chambers of Pennsylvania's legislature moved age-gating bills. They cover two corners of the intimacy economy and take opposite approaches to identity. The state House passed House Bill 2006 by 133-70, with 30 Republicans joining all 103 Democrats. The bill requires AI companion operators to identify minors and obtain verifiable parental consent before granting them access. Across the Capitol, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Senate Bill 603 with bipartisan support. It would make Pennsylvanians show proof of age, such as state identification, to access websites where at least one-third of the material is adult content.

Why It Matters

Pennsylvania is a large market to add to the adult-site age-verification map. The committee's explicit Paxton-conforming amendment shows that post-2025 bills are now drafted for the Supreme Court's standard rather than in hope of beating it. For adult platforms, the practical question is data handling. SB 603 bans retention without saying how, which is the same ambiguity that has produced vendor-by-vendor compliance patchworks in other states. The more interesting signal is the contrast. On the same day, one Pennsylvania chamber wrote a companion-bot law that forbids requiring government ID just to establish age, and the other advanced a porn-site law built on it. For AI-companion companies, HB 2006 is a relatively workable template: email-level assurance, a defined scope, a two-hour disclosure cadence, and AG enforcement with no private right of action mentioned. It fits the multi-state companion-bot map Afterglow has been tracking. For device makers pairing toys with AI companions, the sexual-content restrictions for minors and the persistent "this is AI" notice are the provisions to design around now. HB 2006's Senate prospects are uncertain. SB 603 still needs a floor vote and the House.

HB 2006, sponsored by Rep. Melissa Shusterman (D-Chester), is written narrowly around AI companions, defined as systems that keep interaction histories and hold personal, emotion-based exchanges designed to simulate relationships. Customer-service bots and internal business tools are excluded. Operators would have to run crisis-response protocols when conversations indicate suicidal thoughts, self-harm, certain eating-disorder behaviour, or intent to harm others. Minors would get added protection from sexually explicit exchanges, from conversations that encourage isolation from family and friends, and from requests to create or share sexual material. Every user would see an AI disclosure at the start of each interaction and at least every two hours, followed by a two-minute break. A persistent notice would be required wherever the bot could reasonably be mistaken for a person. The Attorney General would enforce the law, with civil penalties of up to $100,000 per day, public reporting starting July 2028, and an effective date 180 days after enactment. Notably, the bill lets companies verify age through commercially available methods such as account information or a verified email, and it bars them from requiring a government ID solely for that purpose. Rep. Jason Ortitay, the ranking Republican on the House Communications and Technology Committee, called it an "important start" but raised privacy concerns about the data collected to determine age. The bill now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate.

SB 603, from Sen. Cris Dush (R-Jefferson), goes the other direction. The committee agenda describes it as amending the Crimes Code "to require third-party age verification for certain internet websites." It was paired with a technical amendment from Judiciary Chair Lisa Baker "to comport with Miller v. California and Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton." Dush framed it as closing a gap: "When it comes to the protection of children from exposure to pornography, the only verification measure, if any, is clicking a button indicating you're 18 years old. Why should we not protect our kids from pornography websites the same way we protect them from online gambling?" The bill bars adult sites from retaining verification data but, per the Capital-Star, does not specify how. That gap drew the only two no votes, including Sen. Maria Collett (D-Montgomery), who warned about sextortion: "If you're someone who is lawfully visiting a site that you're looking at adult material... we have to be mindful that that data collection can't then be used as a tool to exploit you further." Sen. Steven Santarsiero (D-Bucks) voted to advance the bill while saying he expects it to be amended before final passage. EFF deputy legal director Aaron Mackey called laws of this kind "privacy and data security disasters waiting to happen."

Sources

Update — 2026-09-29

Initial entry — story first created.