Stealth Bot Prohibition Act

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 9915 Introduced in House (IH)]

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119th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 9915

           To prohibit stealth bots, and for other purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 23, 2026

   Ms. Lee of Florida (for herself, Mrs. Foushee, and Mr. Bilirakis)
 introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on
                          Energy and Commerce

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL

           To prohibit stealth bots, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Stealth Bot Prohibition Act''.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION OF STEALTH BOTS.

    (a) Prohibition.--A person may not--
            (1) deploy, direct, or cause to be deployed, a stealth bot
        to access a website, digital platform, or online service in a
        manner that is reasonably likely to damage, impair, or burden
        the technical or commercial operation of a website or other
        internet service; or
            (2) intentionally misrepresent, conceal, or obscure the
        nature of the bot to appear as a human user for use in
        connection with a generative AI model or service.
    (b) Enforcement.--
            (1) Civil action.--The Federal Trade Commission may
        commence a civil action in any district court of the United
        States to recover a civil penalty for a violation of subsection
        (a) or to enjoin any person from committing a violation of
        subsection (a).
            (2) Penalty.--The penalty for each violation of subsection
        (a) may not exceed $53,000 (as adjusted on January 1 each year
        by the percentage increase (if any), during the preceding 12-
        month period, in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban
        Consumers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
            (3) Powers of commission.--Notwithstanding paragraphs (1)
        and (2), the Commission shall have the same jurisdiction,
        powers, and duties to enforce this section as though the
        applicable terms and conditions of the Federal Trade Commission
        Act were incorporated and made part of this section.
            (4) Rules of construction.--Nothing in this section may be
        construed to--
                    (A) limit the authority of the Commission under any
                other provision of law; or
                    (B) authorize the Commission to issue regulations.
    (c) Actions by States.--
            (1) In general.--In any case in which the attorney general
        of a State, or an official or agency of a State, has reason to
        believe that an interest of the residents of such State has
        been or is threatened or adversely affected by an act or
        practice in violation of subsection (a) or a regulation
        promulgated under such subsection, the State, as parens
        patriae, may bring a civil action on behalf of the residents of
        the State in an appropriate district court of the United States
        to--
                    (A) enjoin such act or practice;
                    (B) enforce compliance with such subsection or such
                regulation;
                    (C) obtain damages, restitution, or other
                compensation on behalf of residents of the State; or
                    (D) obtain such other legal and equitable relief as
                the court may consider to be appropriate.
            (2) Notice.--Before filing an action under this subsection,
        the attorney general, official, or agency of the State involved
        shall provide to the Federal Trade Commission a written notice
        of such action and a copy of the complaint for such action. If
        the attorney general, official, or agency determines that it is
        not feasible to provide the notice described in this paragraph
        before the filing of the action, the attorney general,
        official, or agency shall provide written notice of the action
        and a copy of the complaint to the Federal Trade Commission
        immediately upon the filing of the action.
            (3) Authority of federal trade commission.--
                    (A) In general.--On receiving notice under
                paragraph (2) of an action under this subsection, the
                Federal Trade Commission shall have the right--
                            (i) to intervene in the action;
                            (ii) upon so intervening, to be heard on
                        all matters arising therein; and
                            (iii) to file petitions for appeal.
                    (B) Limitation on state action while federal action
                is pending.--If the Federal Trade Commission or the
                Attorney General of the United States has instituted a
                civil action for violation of subsection (a) or a
                regulation promulgated under such subsection (referred
                to in this subparagraph as the ``Federal action''), no
                State attorney general, official, or agency may bring
                an action under this subsection during the pendency of
                the Federal action against any defendant named in the
                complaint in the Federal action for any violation of
                such subsection or regulation alleged in such
                complaint.
            (4) Rule of construction.--For purposes of bringing a civil
        action under this subsection, nothing in this Act may be
        construed to prevent an attorney general, official, or agency
        of a State from exercising the powers conferred on the attorney
        general, official, or agency by the laws of such State to
        conduct investigations, administer oaths and affirmations, or
        compel the attendance of witnesses or the production of
        documentary and other evidence.
    (d) Definitions.--In this section:
            (1) Artificial intelligence; ai.--The terms ``artificial
        intelligence'' and ``AI'' have the meaning given the term
        ``artificial intelligence'' in section 5002 of the National
        Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401)
        as of the date of the enactment of this section.
            (2) Bot.--The term ``bot'' means software that retrieves,
        scans, indexes, scrapes, or otherwise accesses a website or
        other internet source, including but not limited to an online
        crawler, spider, fetcher, client, user agent, AI agent, or
        equivalent tool.
            (3) Commission.--The term ``Commission'' means the Federal
        Trade Commission.
            (4) Generative ai.--The term ``generative AI'' means
        artificial intelligence that is capable of generating content
        such as code, images, music, text, simulations, 3D renderings
        of objects, or videos.
            (5) State.--The term ``State'' means each of the several
        States, the District of Columbia, each commonwealth, territory,
        or possession of the United States, and each federally
        recognized Indian Tribe.
            (6) Stealth bot.--The term ``stealth bot'' means a bot that
        accesses, retrieves, scans, indexes, scrapes, or otherwise
        interacts with a website, digital platform, or online service
        without prior disclosure of its identity and purpose, in
        particular by--
                    (A) failing to identify itself including through a
                valid and accurate user-agent string; or
                    (B) failing to disclose the specific nature and
                purpose of the bot, including any proposed use and
                purpose of page content (including text and data
                mining, search indexing, inferencing, artificial
                intelligence development, support, or operations (such
                as training, fine tuning, retrieval augmented
                generation)) or other automated processing at the time
                access is requested and in a format that the website
                operator can access.
    (e) Limitations Period, Relationship to Other Laws, and
Severability.--
            (1) Limitations period.--A civil action may not be filed
        under this section unless the action is commenced within six
        years after the date on which the violation occurred.
            (2) Relationship to other laws.--Nothing in this section
        shall affect any right, limitation, or remedy available under
        any other Federal or State law or the United States
        Constitution.
    (f) Effective Date.--This section shall take effect 180 days after
the date of the enactment of this Act.
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