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
To prohibit stealth bots, and for other purposes.
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.