[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 10146 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 10146
To require a covered tool to disclose when the covered tool provides
sponsored content, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
August 24, 2026
Mr. Magaziner (for himself and Ms. Norton) introduced the following
bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To require a covered tool to disclose when the covered tool provides
sponsored content, 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 ``AI Advertising Disclosure Act''.
SEC. 2. DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS; PROHIBITIONS.
(a) Mandatory Disclosure Requirements.--
(1) In general.--A covered entity shall disclose when the
response of a covered tool--
(A) mentions, recommends, presents, or favorably
mentions a product, service, or entity pursuant to a
commercial arrangement, regardless of whether the user
explicitly requested a product recommendation;
(B) is general in nature and influenced by a
commercial arrangement, including through a brand-
specific mention, ranking, or omission embedded within
advice, how-to, or informational response not framed as
product queries;
(C) is generated using a system prompt, retrieval-
augmented generation source, or fine-tuning data that
has been provided or funded by a third party under a
commercial arrangement; or
(D) contains an affiliate link or referral code,
whether embedded or appended.
(2) Forms of disclosure.--A disclosure under paragraph (1)
shall be as follows:
(A) Clear and conspicuous, visible without
scrolling, in plain language, and provided with or
before the display of relevant content.
(B) Identify the specific nature of the
relationship (such as a paid promotion, sponsored, or
affiliate partnership).
(C) Retained if the conversation is saved,
exported, or shared.
(D) Not obscured by design, color, font size, or
placement.
(E) With regard to a voice-based covered tool,
delivered without any audio effect that reduces
salience (such as a lower volume or pitch shift).
(b) Prohibited Practices.--A covered entity may not allow a covered
tool to do the following:
(1) Instruct an AI system to deny being AI or be in a
commercial relationship, when directly asked.
(2) Use design patterns that obscure or minimize required
disclosures.
(3) Present sponsored content as the product of organic AI
reasoning when the content is not.
(c) Operator Obligations.--
(1) Commercial arrangement registry required.--A covered
entity shall maintain an internal registry of each third-party
commercial arrangement that influences AI-generated content,
updated in real time.
(2) Requirement to confirm commercial arrangement.--A
covered entity shall provide a user with the ability to ask, in
a given session or conversation, whether any response the user
received was subject to a commercial arrangement.
(d) FTC Rulemaking Authority.--Not later than 180 days after the
date of the enactment of this Act, and every 3 years thereafter (to
account for changes in AI technology), the Commission shall issue
regulations, under section 553 of title 5, United States Code, as the
Commission determines necessary to carry out the provisions of this
Act.
(e) Enforcement by Federal Trade Commission.--
(1) Unfair or deceptive acts or practices.--A violation of
this section or a regulation promulgated under this section
shall be treated as a violation of a regulation under section
18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C.
57a(a)(1)(B)) regarding unfair or deceptive acts or practices.
(2) Powers of commission.--The Federal Trade Commission
shall enforce this section and any regulation promulgated under
this section in the same manner, by the same means, and with
the same jurisdiction, powers, and duties as though all
applicable terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission
Act (15 U.S.C. 41 et seq.) were incorporated into and made a
part of this section. Any person who violates this section or a
regulation promulgated under this section shall be subject to
the penalties and entitled to the privileges and immunities
provided in the Federal Trade Commission Act.
(f) 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 this section or a regulation
promulgated under this section, the State, as parens patriae,
may bring a civil action on behalf of the residents of the
State in an appropriate State court or 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 section 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.
(g) Private Right of Action.--
(1) In general.--A person injured by an act or practice in
violation of this section or a regulation promulgated under
this section may bring in an appropriate State court or an
appropriate district court of the United States--
(A) an action to enjoin the violation;
(B) an action to recover damages for actual
monetary loss from the violation, or to receive up to
$1,000 in damages for each such violation, whichever is
greater; or
(C) both such actions.
(2) Willful or knowing violations.--If the court finds that
the defendant acted willfully or knowingly in committing a
violation described in paragraph (1), the court may, in its
discretion, increase the amount of the award to an amount equal
to not more than 3 times the amount available under paragraph
(1)(B).
(3) Costs and attorney's fees.--The court shall award to a
prevailing plaintiff in an action under this subsection the
costs of such action and reasonable attorney's fees, as
determined by the court.
(4) Limitation.--An action may be commenced under this
subsection not later than 2 years after the date on which the
person first discovered or had a reasonable opportunity to
discover the violation.
(5) Nonexclusive remedy.--The remedy provided by this
subsection shall be in addition to any other remedies available
to the person.
(h) Definitions.--In this section:
(1) AI.--The term ``AI'' has the meaning given that term in
section 5002 of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative
Act of 2020 (15 U.S.C. 9401).
(2) AI chatbot.--The term ``AI chatbot'' means any software
system that uses a large language model or similar technology
to generate conversational responses to user queries that is
made available to the public.
(3) Commercial arrangement.--The term ``commercial
arrangement'' means an exchange of money, data, preferential
access, or other consideration that influences the content of
an AI-generated response.
(4) Covered entity.--The term ``covered entity'' means any
person, company, or organization that deploys or operates a
covered tool for consumer-facing use with more than 50,000
monthly active users.
(5) Covered tool.--The term ``covered tool''--
(A) means an AI interactive computer service or
software application that--
(i) generates responses that are not fully
predetermined; and
(ii) accepts open-ended natural-language or
multimodal user input and produces adaptive or
context-responsive output; and
(B) includes an AI chatbot and a generative search
synthesis feature.
(6) Generative search synthesis feature.--The term
``generative search synthesis feature''--
(A) means any feature of an online search engine or
information-retrieval service that uses a large
language model or similar technology to produce, in
response to a search by the user, a synthesized
narrative answer, summary, or recommendation that is
displayed to the user in lieu of, or more prominently
than, the ranked list of hyperlinks to third-party
sources that the service would otherwise return; and
(B) includes any feature that generates the answer,
summary, or recommendations described in subparagraph
(A) automatically as part of a standard results page,
regardless of whether the user separately requested a
summary and whether source citations accompany the
generated output.
(7) Sponsored content.--The term ``sponsored content''
means an AI-generated response that--
(A) mentions, recommends, or promotes a specific
product, service, or entity; and
(B) is produced in whole or in part due to a
commercial arrangement between the covered entity and a
third party.
(8) 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.
(9) Voice-based covered tools.--The term ``voice-based
covered tools'' means a covered tool that delivers responses
primarily through AI-generated speech.
(i) Relation to Other Laws.--
(1) Rule of construction.--Nothing in this section may be
construed to limit the authority of the Commission, the Federal
Communications Commission, or State consumer protection
agencies.
(2) Preemption.--This section does not preempt a State law
that provides greater consumer protection related to a covered
tool.
(j) Effective Date.--This section shall take effect 12 months after
the date of the enactment of this section.
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