How should we regulate AI companions?

Clare Huntington, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, has a template.

Faculty Bio:

Clare Huntington ’96 is a nationally recognized expert in family law and poverty law. Her wide-ranging scholarship explores the institutions and empirical foundations of the legal system’s approach to relationships. Her research focuses on early childhood development, aging, the impact of AI on our affective lives, and the challenges facing nonmarital families because of the law’s myopic focus on marriage. Huntington has received five teaching awards, including, in 2025, the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching.Huntington’s research has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, New York University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, among other academic journals. She is the author of Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships and a co-editor of Social Parenthood in Comparative Perspective. She served as associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law. Before entering academia, Huntington was an attorney adviser in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and clerked for Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Denise L. Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.Huntington is a co-founder and co-chair of the University Seminar on Families and Inequality and an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University and the Columbia Population Research Center.Huntington joined Columbia Law School as a professor of law on July 1, 2023. She was previously a visiting scholar in 2008 and Nathaniel Fensterstock Visiting Professor of Law in 2022. Prior to her appointment at Columbia Law, she was the Joseph M. McLaughlin Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. During her tenure there, she was associate dean for strategic initiatives and associate dean for research and was named Teacher of the Year in 2021. She was previously associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

Transcript:

Stories about AI companions are everywhere. Sometimes the stories are heart-breaking. Sometimes the stories are encouraging. And often we don’t know what to think of this new phenomenon. What we do know is that millions of people of all ages regularly use AI companions for friendship, sexual intimacy, mental health support, and much more.Just like a relationship with a human, a relationship with an AI companion brings both benefits and risks. Children are especially vulnerable to the risks, including addiction, abuse, and invasion of privacy. But unlike human relationships, there is very little regulation of AI companionship.I study family law, and my research shows that this area of the law offers lessons for sensible regulation.First, family law shows why the legal system should regulate AI companionship. Close relationships help children and adults flourish, but these relationships also bring vulnerability. Our legal system recognizes this, with a particular emphasis on protecting children.Second, family law shows how to regulate AI companionship. To give one example, family law steps in when a power imbalance in a relationship leads to abuse. This lesson should be applied to the power imbalance between technology companies and users of AI companions. To give another example: family law requires mental health experts to be trained and licensed. AI companions marketed for therapeutic purposes should face the same gatekeeping.Finally, family law offers a track record of overcoming political polarization. Family law can bring together lawmakers of all political stripes, especially if the shared goal is protecting children.

Read More:

[Minnesota Law Review] - AI Companions and the Lessons of Family Law

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Clare Huntington, Columbia Law School - It’s Time to Regulate AI Companions—and Family Law Can Help

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Clare Huntington, Columbia Law School - It’s Time to Regulate AI Companions—and Family Law Can Help